Susanna Jäghult © ECCO

Marie Andersson © ECCO

The e-CCO Learning Platform is fantastic and a real goldmine! The number of activities is enormous, all of them of high quality. The N-ECCO Committee has started to discuss how this goldmine can best be made available to IBD Nurses around Europe.

The 18^th Congress of ECCO, Copenhagen, Denmark – Inflammatory Bowel Diseases 2023, held on March 1-4, 2023, attracted a total number of 6,754 delegates from 100 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’23 Congress in Copenhagen.

Dear IBD Colleagues and Friends, 

After the previous two editions of our Annual Congress had to be conducted virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we once again had the opportunity to share and exchange knowledge and ideas in person during the 18^th Congress of ECCO, held from March 1-4, 2023. This was really exciting!

First, the Educational Programme, which was scheduled prior to the official start of the ECCO Congress, covered activities for ECCO's different interest groups, including young gastroenterologists, surgeons, paediatricians, pathologists, IBD Nurses and allied health professionals and scientists. The Programme included two exciting imaging courses offered in collaboration with ESGAR & IBUS, the School for Clinical Trialists and our Basic Science and SciCom Workshops. 

Marc Ferrante © ECCO

Isabelle Cleynen © ECCO

Timothy Raine © ECCO

At the recent 18^th Congress of ECCO, Sebastian Zeissig (Dresden, Germany) stepped down as a member of the ECCO Scientific Committee. After two years of active membership, Sebastian became SciCom Chair back in 2020. Although this period was greatly affected by the pandemic, Sebastian made sure that ECCO continued to support clinical, translational and basic science. During his chairmanship, the different ECCO Fellowships, Grants and Travel Awards were streamlined and optimised. Together with the rest of the team, he spent a lot of energy in finding appropriate reviewers for the dozens of project proposals received every year. Sebastian was also the driving force behind the new ECCO Young Researcher Award, which was granted for the first time earlier this year. As SciCom Chair, he supervised two successful Scientific Workshops, one on precision medicine (together with Michael Scharl) and another on postoperative Crohn’s Disease recurrence (together with Yves Panis and Marc Ferrante). We thank Sebastian for his great enthusiasm, his perseverance and his friendship.

Peter Bossuyt © ECCO

Designing, organising and performing clinical trials in IBD is a challenge. Drug development trials often follow the well-known pathways, with established endpoints and a more or less standardised study design. Things become more complicated when the clinical researcher departs from these trusted routes.  In this context, ClinCom (the Clinical Research Committee of ECCO) organised two courses during the last ECCO Congress in Copenhagen.

A total of 74 epidemiological abstracts and 18 digital oral presentations were presented at ECCO'23 in Copenhagen. Five abstracts of particular interest are discussed below.

A novel population-based UK study by Cooney and colleagues (OP 28) examined the association of IBD and various mental health disorders such as depression, anxiety and self-harm in children and adolescents. A large primary care database was used to identify cases. Each case was propensity matched with four controls. Relative risk of all outcomes up to 10 years in the IBD cohort versus controls was estimated using adjusted Cox proportional hazards models controlling for age, sex, socioeconomic status, ethnicity and other conditions. A total of 3898 young patients with incident IBD were matched to 15,571 controls. IBD patients were significantly more likely to develop PTSD [adjusted hazard ratio (aHR) 2.47, 95% CI 1.23–4.94], eating disorders (aHR 1.85, 95% CI 1.05–3.26), self-harm (aHR 1.49, 95% CI 1.00–2.21), sleep disturbance (aHR 1.40, 95% CI 1.15–1.71), depression (aHR 1.34, 95% CI 1.16–1.56) and anxiety disorder (aHR 1.25, 95% CI 1.06–1.48). These findings highlight the need to screen for these conditions in young patients.

A total of 74 epidemiological abstracts and 18 digital oral presentations were presented at ECCO'23 in Copenhagen. Five abstracts of particular interest are discussed below.

A novel population-based UK study by Cooney and colleagues (OP 28) examined the association of IBD and various mental health disorders such as depression, anxiety and self-harm in children and adolescents. A large primary care database was used to identify cases. Each case was propensity matched with four controls. Relative risk of all outcomes up to 10 years in the IBD cohort versus controls was estimated using adjusted Cox proportional hazards models controlling for age, sex, socioeconomic status, ethnicity and other conditions. A total of 3898 young patients with incident IBD were matched to 15,571 controls. IBD patients were significantly more likely to develop PTSD [adjusted hazard ratio (aHR) 2.47, 95% CI 1.23–4.94], eating disorders (aHR 1.85, 95% CI 1.05–3.26), self-harm (aHR 1.49, 95% CI 1.00–2.21), sleep disturbance (aHR 1.40, 95% CI 1.15–1.71), depression (aHR 1.34, 95% CI 1.16–1.56) and anxiety disorder (aHR 1.25, 95% CI 1.06–1.48). These findings highlight the need to screen for these conditions in young patients.

Ultrasound and MRI Portion

Mariangela Allocca © ECCO

Uri Kopylov © ECCO

The 4^th ECCO Basic Imaging Workshop in collaboration with ESGAR & IBUS opened with two introductory lectures on what to look for in intestinal ultrasound (IUS) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), given by Christian Maaser (Germany) and Pasquale Paolantonio (Italy), respectively. These lectures introduced the hands-on part of the workshop. Delegates (n=60 in the morning and 60 in the afternoon session) were subdivided into small groups at 12 different stations, where, with the support of expert tutors – one radiologist and one gastroenterologist – they interactively discussed MRI exams and performed sonographic evaluations, employing hands-on IUS simulators on different IBD cases.

Mariangela Allocca  © ECCO

Finally, after a hiatus of two years owing to the global COVID-19 pandemic, the 10^th ECCO Ultrasound Workshop – Advanced in collaboration with ESGAR & IBUS took place physically at ECCO’23 in Copenhagen.

The 3^rd ECCO Postgraduate Course in IBD, entitled "It's getting more complicated!", was successfully held on-site during the 18^th ECCO Congress in Copenhagen in March 2023. The course was split into two sessions, with the first session focusing on common complications in IBD practice, which were presented by renowned speakers who are key opinion leaders in the field. The second session was an interactive discussion with expert panelists, who discussed two vignettes that looked at practical assessment and decision making in the context of complicated Crohn’s Disease and Ulcerative Colitis.