IASGO was founded in Amsterdam in 1988. Today, we are privileged to have strong IASGO sections in more than 70 countries, which greatly assists in assessing educational needs. The main goal of this organization has been and remains globalization of medical knowledge and expertise through a well-structured and precisely organized system of continued medical education. It is our belief that medical knowledge and expertise belongs to every human being on this planet, and that has to be available beyond any kind of discrimination, based on individual institutional or national level, to every patient that strives for survival because of challenging and life-threatening diseases.

In keeping with this philosophy, we have been organizing, apart from our Annual World Congress, annual Advanced Post-Graduate Training Courses for all the 30 years of our history. The main characteristics of this program have been the multi-disciplinary structure and multi-national reach. These courses are always organized in close cooperation with national universities or governmental authorities, aiming to update the participants in the newest developments in the field of Surgical, Radiation and Medical Oncology, Endoscopy, and Interventional Radiology.

In this way, we bring together colleagues specialized in different disciplines. This kind of blend offers unique opportunities to exchange experience and to learn from each other about the indications and limitations of each discipline, in the era of management of abdominal malignancies. These interactions offer the unique opportunity to define a meeting point where one discipline will supplement the other, in such a way that every individual patient will get the optimal kind of treatment. With the major advances in the area of medical oncology over the last decade, we have now expanded our program to include courses on this topic, and benefit from the support of world-class faculty from major academic centers in Europe, USA, and Asia.  The approach is intended to promote the latest breakthroughs in translational cancer research in parallel to advances in surgery and gastroenterology.