Letter from the ECCO President

In ECCO News Issue 4 our Associate Editors have started the first episode of a new interesting series where they summarise talks of ECCO's KOL outside the ECCO Congress - the first edition is focusing on activities at the last UEG Week.

The S-ECCO Chair informs us how to become a good surgeon. It is not so easy to be objective in this case, but as always, S-ECCO provides very nice and interesting information. We should be grateful to Y-ECCO for performing a literature review and selecting articles that may change our clinical practice.

I have good news: ClinCom and EpiCom are currently working on a Position Statement on the first core outcome set for real-world evidence studies. Only one-third of IBD patients included in clinical trials reflect our routine practice. Therefore, well-designed real-world studies such as ICARE are mandatory to guide decision making. You will also find an informative article about the current status of treat-to-target strategies in IBD. We are all convinced that tight monitoring and STRIDE guidelines have changed our patients’ lives. Whether they have dramatically modified the disease course and prevented the occurrence of disease complications will require further investigation.

Also in this issue, Johan Burisch announces the first Y-ECCO Mentorship Forum! On behalf of ECCO, I am pleased to say, "Thank you, Johan, for everything you have done so far, not only for Y-ECCO but also for ECCO in general – we count on you for the future!". I strongly encourage you to read his interview and to discover the story of his grandfather. Johan will probably become as famous as his grandfather in the upcoming years.

I wish you a wonderful Christmas time!

See you soon in person. There is still time to get vaccinated for the third or fourth time!

Laurent Peyrin-Biroulet