The School was founded in 1982 by
Umberto Veronesi, an Italian breast surgeon and Scientific Director of the National Cancer Institute of Milan. The concept, first outlined at the 1981 founding congress of the
European Society of Surgical Oncology, was for a permanent interdisciplinary and international school, free from non-medical influence, and in line with the medical traditions of the 'Old Continent' of Europe, which were seen as distinct from the medical culture in the US, in putting a greater emphasis on the therapeutic importance of the doctor‒patient relationship. The founding scientific leadership of the School was drawn from a range of oncology disciplines and European countries. They included
Michael Peckham, a UK-based radiotherapist and co-founder of the European Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology (now
European Society for Radiotherapy and Oncology),;
Herbert Pinedo, a leader in the emerging specialism of
medical oncology, based in the Netherlands, and author of early editions of
Cancer Chemotherapy;
Franco Cavalli, a Swiss haematologist and founding member of the
European Society for Medical Oncology, Louis Denis, a urologist and founder member of the
European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer genito-urinary group; and
Umberto Veronesi himself, an Italian breast surgeon, who had developed and trialled the quadrantectomy technique for breast conserving surgery and initiated the first trials investigating the impact of adjuvant chemotherapy in operable breast cancer.
Multiprofessional cancer care education The first ESO oncology course was held in 1982 in the Castello di Pomerio in Lombardy northern Italy, near Milan. From 2001, the School began to focus much of its work on countries in
Central and Eastern Europe and the
Balkans region, where survival rates for cancer were markedly lower than in
Western Europe and
Northern Europe. It also started to widen its areas of work to support oncologists at different stages in their careers, starting from the time they leave medical school. In 2002 ESO ran the first five-day Masterclass in Clinical Oncology. In 2004 it initiated a summertime Oncology for Medical Students course. In 2008 the e-ESO distance learning programme was started, to increase global access to oncology education. In 2012 ESO launched a visiting professors programme, primarily to support clinical institutes in
Eastern Europe and the
Balkan Region. and also set up certificates of competence as specialist qualifications in
lymphoma,
breast cancer, and
gastrointestinal cancer, and a certificate of advanced studies in lung cancer, which run in collaboration with the
University of Ulm, the
University of Zurich and the
Università della Svizzera italiana. In 2020 the School set up the ESO college ESCO, to bring all these different initiatives into a structure that alumni can pursue step by step. == Societies ==