The European Commission entrusted the Institute with the task of updating the European Code Against Cancer, the first EC document on cancer prevention, distributed to all EC citizens, and recommending ways in which the most common cancers may be avoided.
The new (third) version of the Code was presented by the EU Commissioner for Health and
Consumer Protection, David Byrne, on 16 June 2003. The code indicates how certain lifestyle changes could lead to a 20% reduction in cancer deaths by the year 2015, thereby avoiding 300,000 deaths per year in the European Community.

The sentinel lymph node technique is internationally recognised as a standard practice whereby the extent of breast cancer spread can be assessed in the presence of small nodes. Research conducted at the IEO and published in The New England Journal of Medicine on August 7 2003 highlighted how patients with tumours less than 2cm in diameter investigated with this technique showed a cure rate of 98% - a rate similar, or indeed superior, to that for women who had undergone excision of their axillary lymph nodes.

The initial results of a clinical trial conducted at the IEO, and published in The Lancet on August 23 2003, showed how the association of Spiral Computed Tomography (Spiral CT) and PET (Positron Emission Tomography) is able to detect even the smallest lung tumours and enables investigators to analyse whether they are benign or malignant. It was demonstrated that in 95% of cases that combined use of the two examinations enabled the tumours to be localised in their initial stages, when the probabilities for successful surgical removal are at their highest.

The year 2003 drew to a close with an enormous increase in the IEO’s Impact Factor with respect to 2002. The Impact Factor increased by 60%, going from 881.9 to 1413.6. The Impact Factor is the only universally accepted index of “scientific authority”, and represents a measure of how many times a research institute, hospital or university is cited as a reference in the international scientific literature.