Dear Y-ECCO Friends,

I hope you are all well and that those of you who made the trip back to Copenhagen for UEGW had an interesting and enjoyable conference. We are now very much into the foothills of ECCO’24, which will take place in Stockholm in February, and I hope many of you have submitted your work for presentation there. I also hope that you will consider attending our 10th Y-ECCO Science Workshop, to be held on the afternoon of Wednesday, February 21, immediately prior to the main Congress itself. As always, we will have a mixture of established clinician-scientists presenting keynote lectures and up-and-coming Y-ECCO Members presenting their own original work. We’re looking forward to an inquisitive and collaborative atmosphere and it would be fantastic to see you all there!

Fibrosis and other connective tissue abnormalities are common in IBD, especially in Crohn’s Disease. The main clinical consequence is strictures, occurring most often in the small bowel or at the ileocaecal/ileocolic junction. Surgery may be necessary for stricture management.

Seamus Hussey © ECCO

2023 has been another outstanding year of emerging Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) treatments – in adults.  Children and young adults remain underserved by clinical trials of IBD therapies.  While this age demographic garners much sympathy, and accounts for one-quarter of all new diagnoses, children and young adults are disenfranchised from accessing cutting-edge drug trials by virtue of age alone. Paediatric patients are the almost perfect participants – having generally fewer comorbidities, shorter disease duration and seemingly better treatment responses than adults. The additional challenges posed by trials in this age group have, however, left a relatively barren landscape of industry-sponsored trials in their wake. What, then, are the ongoing challenges, and what have industry and our drug trial community done to level the therapeutic playing field?

The increasing complexity of care for patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) has driven the need for multidisciplinary care.  This has led centres and practices to hold regular multidisciplinary team meetings (MDTs) at which specialists in gastroenterology, surgery, radiology and pathology discuss patients. It has also led to joint clinics where practice environments allow patients to be seen by specialists in both gastroenterology and surgery, and even in some cases by experts in stoma therapy, nutrition and psychology, all on the same day. This allows for greater cross-disciplinary dialogue and more consistent messaging to the patient, which improves the quality of care and overall patient experience.

As a D-ECCO Committee Member, it is my mission, along with my fellow D-ECCO’ers, to educate and train other dietitians and healthcare professionals in the field of IBD. Also, with dietary therapies and beliefs still growing and consolidating their place in the prevention and treatment of IBD, there is an emerging need for skilled dietitians to guide our patients in the different nutritional pathways throughout their disease. But what makes a dietitian skilled in the field of IBD?

General information

Name: Goedele Dewitte

Occupation: Nurse Consultant IBD

Observation period: 24–28 October, 2022

IBD location: St. Mark’s Hospital, Central Middlesex, London

Local Supervisor at St. Mark’s: Prof. Hart and ANP-IBD Nurse Madhoor Ramdeem

Supervisor at current IBD unit, Ghent University Hospital: Prof. Lobaton and Dr. Geldof

Goedele Dewitte © Goedele Dewitte

Background

St Mark's Hospital in London is the only hospital dedicated solely to gastrointestinal pathology. It includes a reference IBD unit, a world centre of excellence for endoscopy (Wolfson unit) and an intestinal failure/rehabilitation unit. Both the endoscopy and the intestinal rehabilitation unit work in harmony with the IBD unit to optimise the care for tertiary and complex IBD pathology.

This observational internship was intended to increase insight into the organisation of a tertiary, high-volume IBD reference centre from the nursing point of view.  

Torsten Kucharzik © ECCO

GuiCom has developed important and world-wide recognised guidelines on the Diagnosis and Management of IBD. In order to create standardised guidelines of the highest quality, regular rotation and recruitment of highly experienced candidates is crucial. It is my great pleasure to introduce Johan Burisch, who will become a new GuiCom Member at the beginning of 2024. Johan was selected from a large group of excellent applicants for this position.

Mariangela Allocca © ECCO

The 73rd ECCO Educational Workshop was held in Bucharest, Romania, on September 23, 2023. The workshop focused in the first session on specific clinical scenarios, including the management of acute severe ulcerative colitis, complicated Crohn's disease, and postoperative monitoring, and then addressed challenging and hot topics in the second session, such as treatment escalation and de-escalation and drug-associated side effects.  The interest of the topics covered stimulated several interactive discussions, providing a platform for networking and exchange of innovative ideas.

Natália Queiroz © ECCO

The 72nd ECCO Educational Workshop occurred in Cartagena, Colombia, on September 14th, 2023, uniting participants from Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. The workshop featured interactive discussions on different clinical scenarios emphasizing the multidisciplinary approach and state-of-the-art lectures on hot topics in IBD.

Pascal Juillerat  © ECCO

Dear ECCO Members,

Greetings to you and your families! I am sure you are all looking forward to the holidays and spending some quality time with all your loved ones.

Here is a recap to the changes made to the e-Learning platform this year: we have added new and exciting content for you to browse through, including the updated the e-Library with all the latest Abstracts and Presentations from the ECCO’23 Congress, and to check out a list of specially curated list recorded Educational Courses.