56th ECCO Educational Workshop in Athens, Greece

The ECCO Workshop in Greece was organised in the heart of the historical and beautiful city of Athens. ECCO Faculty Oded Zmora, from Israel, and Konstantinos Katsanos, from Ioannina joined the local faculty of the Greek IBD Study Group (Ioannis Koutroubakis, Gerassimos Mantzaris, Georgios Bamias, Nikolaos Viazis, Konstantinos Karmiris and Dimitrios Christodoulou).  Ioannis Koutroubakis (Head of the Greek IBD Study Group) welcomed all participants and highlighted the importance of the workshop.

56th ECCO Educational Workshop in Athens © ECCO

Julian Piskula from the ECCO Office was present and his valuable contribution to the organisational success of the meeting was obvious. We are all grateful to the secretary, Spyridoula Kardara from the Greek IBD Study Group, who did a fantastic job in focussing on every organisational detail from the Greek side.

The programme of the workshop was based on clinical cases illustrated by a set of ECCO Statements with the intention of ensuring that the workshop was as educational and interactive as possible, with extensive involvement of participants in discussions. The programme consisted of cases specifically designed for the ECCO Educational Workshops, to be used by ECCO and local lecturers. This approach allows a common message to be presented and guarantees maintenance of a high level of quality at each individual workshop. The full programme was:

Case 1: Acute Severe Colitis – Gerassimos Mantzaris, Athens, Greece
Case 2: Fistulising Crohn’s Disease – Georgios Bamias, Athens, Greece
Case 3: Pouchitis – Nikolaos Viazis, Athens, Greece
Case 4: Complications from medications in IBD – Konstantinos Karmiris, Heraklion, Greece
Case 5: Optimising therapy – Ioannis Koutroubakis, Heraklion, Greece Krakow, Poland
Case 6: Recurrent complicated ileocaecal CD – Oded Zmora, Tel Aviv, Israel
Case 7: IBD and cancer/comorbidity – Konstantinos Katsanos, Ioannina, Greece
Case 8: Pregnancy and IBD – Dimitrios Christodoulou, Ioannina, Greece

The workshop was attended by 53 participants from all over Greece and Cyprus. All of the sessions were followed with great interest and generated high levels of active participation. In selecting the clinical cases, the local organisers aimed to choose those likely to be of most interest to the attendees. There was a strong focus on the surgical aspects of IBD and the complications associated with particular medications. IBD care is concentrated in several centres in Greece, and it was considered important to provide all colleagues with a review of important clinical situations in the care of IBD patients. Scientific sessions based on patient cases stimulated interesting discussions among gastroenterologists and between gastroenterologists and surgeons. 

Dimitrios Christodoulou summarised the workshop and expressed thanks to ECCO and the ECCO Office (represented by Julian Piskula), the faculty, the Governing Board of the Greek IBD Study Group, the sponsors of the course and the many attendees at this successful workshop.

56th ECCO Educational Workshop in Athens © ECCO

56th ECCO Educational Workshop in Athens © ECCO