Natália Queiroz © ECCO

The 22^nd ECCO IBD Intensive Course for Trainees took place on February 21, 2024, in the vibrant city of Stockholm. Despite the cold and moody weather outside, the course itself was a lively and buzzing experience, filled with enthusiastic discussions and valuable insights.

A total of 116 abstracts with an epidemiology theme were accepted for presentation at the ECCO Congress in 2024. This represented an increase over the previous year, with total submissions in this category up by 20%. It is clear that ECCO Members and IBD researchers see epidemiology as a vital part of our understanding of the overall picture of IBD aetiology, management and outcomes. Here we highlight just a few of the top abstracts that caught our eye.

Murat Toruner © ECCO

Dear IBD Friends and Colleagues, 

ClinCom organised two courses at the recent 19^th Congress of ECCO in Stockholm. The first course was the 9^th ClinCom Workshop, which comprised two sessions and attracted 39 participants.

At ECCO’24, Stockholm, the winners of the ECCO Fellowships and Grants programme received their certificates, presented by SciCom Chair Marc Ferrante together with President Britta Seigmund. This year, a record number of grants were awarded, including the new Global Grant designed for low and lower-middle income countries as well as the IIS Registry Grant given for the first time. 

Isabelle Cleynen © ECCO

At the last ECCO Congress, we had three members stepping down from the ECCO Scientific Committee: Marc Ferrante (Leuven, Belgium; Member since 2019, Chair since 2023), Yves Panis (Clichy, France; Member since 2020) and Konstantinos Papamichail (Boston, US; Member since 2020). Although all three of them served on SciCom in a period greatly impacted by the pandemic, together with the other SciCom Members they ensured a seamless continuation of SciCom activities and the initiation of new ones.

Brigida Barberio © ECCO

Dear IBD colleagues and friends,

Are you enjoying the first sunshine of spring, with its blooming trees, with longer days and milder temperatures?

Now, just for a moment, I want to bring all of you back to last winter and, particularly, to our 19^th Congress of ECCO, held in Stockholm February 21-24, 2024, which I think was really exciting!

The 19^th Congress of ECCO, Stockholm, Sweden – Inflammatory Bowel Diseases 2024, held on February 21-24, 2024, attracted a total number of 7,223 delegates from 99 different countries. Since the inaugural ECCO Congress in 2006 in Amsterdam, at which there were 350 delegates, participant numbers have steadily increased, as shown in the graph below. Despite the COVID-19 outbreak in the beginning of 2020, we are happy that this high number of delegates had the chance to participate in the ECCO’24 Congress in Stockholm.

Britta Siegmund © ECCO

Dear ECCO Friends,

Spring is here and I am reflecting on the wonderful Congress that we had in Stockholm!

The new ECCO Strategy – REACH – has not only been fully introduced but has already been fully addressed in all our committees. The focus of this year’s Congress was the “E” – Equal access to care, emphasising the global impact of ECCO. With 99 different countries represented at the Congress and many multinational exchanges throughout the programme, it is evident that the number of networks is growing and that there are many plans to come. We, as the Governing Board, are very excited that the ECCO Family shares our enthusiasm for REACH!

Spyros Siakavellas © Spyros Siakavellas

Dear ECCO friends and family,

It is my pleasure to introduce the ECCO National Representatives of Portugal Helena Tavares de Sousa and Samuel Fernandes. We had an intriguing discussion on a wide range of topics such as the challenges of treating IBD in Portugal, how GEDII their national IBD group helps with clinical management but also research projects, what Portugal is doing right in producing a lot of inspiring figures in Gastroenterology that lead the European Gastroenterology Organisations like ECCO president-elect Fernando Magro, but also for their respective areas of research interest namely intestinal fibrosis for Helena and transmural inflammation for Samuel and much more!

I hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

Spyros Siakavellas
ECCO News Associate Editor

Dear colleagues,

Welcome again to a new episode of the JCC Podcast in ECCO News!

We know that there is a "window of opportunity", where starting an effective therapy can improve outcomes in Crohn´s disease. This is also the case for early introduction of anti-TNFs but, how early should we start it to change the natural history of the disease?

To answer that question, we are featuring a brief conversation about the article Early intervention with biologic therapy in Crohn´s disease: how early is early? recently published in JCC, with first author Joana Reves from Portugal.

We hope you find it interesting and useful for your clinical practice!

Thanks for joining us.

Best regards,

Ignacio Catalan-Serra