Michel Adamina © ECCO

For the past year the COVID-19 pandemic has raged across the world, with wave after wave of the disease. No country has been spared and no end is in sight in the near future. A recent position paper from the ECCO COVID-19 Taskforce presented the ten ‘dos and don’ts’ when caring for IBD patients. S-ECCO Members are involved in the specialised surgical care of IBD patients in many countries and a variety of institutions. Hence, we are offering this opinion piece on the performance of IBD surgery during the pandemic.

Marjo Campmans-Kuijpers © ECCO

Due to COVID-19, the 16^th ECCO Congress originally planned for February 2021 in Berlin was postponed to July 7–10 in the Bella Center in Copenhagen. However, in view of the current COVID-19 situation, the ECCO Governing Board had to switch to ECCO’ 21 Virtual Congress. It’s a pity we cannot meet each other live, but holding the Congress online may increase the opportunity for more people to attend both the Congress itself and our 6^th D-ECCO Workshop.

Susanna Jäghult  © ECCO

Following the summary of the ECCO'21 Educational Programme N-ECCO have prepared for you, we are very excited and looking already ahead to the ECCO'22 Congress.

After a year during which most of the focus has been on COVID-19 and most of our meetings have been digital, we can finally see some light at the end of the tunnel and look forward to meeting face to face again. Unfortunately, we need to wait a bit longer and the ECCO Congress will this year be a virtual meeting. We have arranged a lot of very interesting sessions and I hope you all will sign up. But we have also been very active in planning for the ECCO Congress in 2022, which, I am very proud and happy to say, will be held in Stockholm, my home town. I hope to see you all there!

Hannah Gordon  © ECCO

On Sunday October 11, 2020, all participants of the ECCO Guidelines on Prevention and Management of Infection met with the aim of reaching a consensus on each statement of the guideline. This guideline provides evidence-based insights into the prevention, diagnosis and management of infection in Inflammatory Bowel Disease. The project is led by Torsten Kucharzik and Stephan Vavricka, with 25 authors from 15 different countries. This is ECCO’s third guideline on infection in IBD; the first guideline on opportunistic infection was published in 2009, and updated in 2014.

Henit Yanai  © ECCO

“I’m not a fellow anymore but I would love to have the opportunity to be part of such a course!” This is a quote from a colleague who works in a private practice that I heard on the bus on the way back to Copenhagen airport after ECCO 2019. Thanks to this remark we embarked on this endeavour to hold the 1^st ECCO Postgraduate Course in IBD.  

Sophie Restellini  © ECCO

Digital health is a broad concept encompassing categories such as mobile health (mHealth), health information technology (HIT), wearable devices, telehealth and telemedicine, with several aims, one of which  is to foster the development of personalised medicine [1, 2].

Digital care meets the same requirements as in-person medicine (regarding ethics, patient consent, authentication of health professionals, report of consultation in the patient's file). Pre-COVID-19 this model of care was successfully used to monitor patients with a variety of chronic illnesses, and it gained traction after the emergence of COVID-19 because of the emerging need to apply alternative ways of delivering healthcare without human contact.

Peter Bossuyt © ECCO

During the upcoming ECCO Virtual Congress, ClinCom is organising the 4^th School for Clinical Trialists. One of ClinCom’s aims is to increase the quality of clinical trials in IBD and to provide new insights into the fast-moving field of clinical trial development. Randomised clinical trials (RCTs) are still the gold standard for the development and registration of new treatment options. 

Sebastian Zeissig  © ECCO

Dear ECCO Members and Friends, 

ECCO has established Fellowships, Grants and Travel Awards to encourage and support young physicians in their careers and to promote innovative scientific research in IBD.   

Nuha Yassin © Nuha Yassin

It gives me great pleasure to introduce you to ECCO’s new Treasurer, Professor Janneke van der Woude. Janneke is a Consultant Gastroenterologist at the Erasmus University Medical Centre in Rotterdam. She is the clinical lead for the IBD unit and has published widely in the field. As a very active ECCO Committee and Executive Board Member since its infancy, we are really excited to get to know Prof Van Der Woude more.

The interview will comprise of a personal introduction, insights into Janneke’s professional life, her ECCO journey, some hot topic discussions and what’s in store for the future. We hope you enjoy listening to this interview by clicking on the audio link below:

Charlotte Hedin © ECCO

Hemel is currently working as a dentist in London. He was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease and within a year of getting his diagnosis he was invited to participate in a trial of an anti-TNF drug. Here he gives his view of his experience of being in a clinical trial.