Report on the 70th ECCO Educational Workshop, Istanbul, Turkey
Manuel Barreiro-de Acosta , EduCom Member
 Manuel Barreiro-de Acosta © ECCO |
The 70th ECCO Educational Workshop took place at the Hilton Bakirkoy Hotel in Istanbul, Turkey, on June 3, 2023. This event, the first ECCO Workshop of the year, brought together participants from Turkey and Romania and provided the perfect conclusion to the Turkish Inflammatory Bowel Disease Annual Meeting, which had started on the previous day. The workshop featured interactive discussion on various clinical scenarios and hot topics in IBD.
The always attractive Istanbul offered a lovely setting between Europe and Asia for the first face-to-face workshop “outside” Europe since the beginning of the pandemic. It was great finally to meet colleagues and to have an excellent opportunity to network and exchange ideas.
The ECCO Faculty comprised Manuel Barreiro de Acosta (EduCom Member), who was joined by the local faculty comprising Aykut Ferhat Çelik, Hülya Hamzaoğlu, Taylan Kav, Filiz Akyüz, Murat Törüner, Ali İbrahim Hatemi, Hale Akpınar, Yeşim Alahdab, Nalan Gülşen Ünal and Can Gönen. All faculty members were involved in the presentation and discussion of the cases. The environment was easy-going, allowing delegates and pupils to join the discussion so that all participants could learn from different experiences in different local settings, including with regard to the application of ECCO Guidelines in clinical practice.
The workshop was divided into four sessions, and topics were directly related to daily challenges in clinical practice. The morning sessions focused on comorbidity and cancer, management of ileocecal Crohn’s Disease, optimisation of therapies and pouchitis. In the afternoon, we discussed both pregnancy in IBD patients and recurrent complicated Crohn’s Disease. Afterwards, the popular topics of stopping drugs and exit strategy took centre stage. The scene was set with a clinical case, on which the discussion was based. The participation was amazing, with a lot of questions, discussion and sharing of ideas in order to improve the management of IBD patients.
It was once again a great pleasure to have an ECCO Educational Workshop in Turkey, and we can’t wait for the next one!
Pictures are subject to copyright © Turkish IBD Association IBH