Report on the 1st ECCO Postgraduate Course, Virtual

The programme comprised two parts, the first of which was entitled “Prepare yourself with the experts”. Séverine Vermeire (former ECCO President) opened the session with a talk on the importance of IBD. Séverine covered significant aspects and milestones in IBD history, epidemiology and pathogenesis, describing the importance of diet and emulsifiers, among other environmental factors. We then heard from Laurent Peyrin-Biroulet, ECCO President, who delivered a practical and up-to-date talk on how we should diagnose and evaluate a new IBD case. After that, we went back in time, looking at some aspects of everyday practice together with Shomron Ben-Horin. Shomron highlighted useful tricks on how to optimise the good old drugs like the mesalamine compounds and the thiopurines. We continued with a comprehensive talk from Silvio Danese (former ECCO President), who covered biologics and small molecules. The session concluded with a talk by Paulo Kotze, who brilliantly demonstrated the essentials of multidisciplinary collaboration between the IBD and surgical teams.

The second part of the PGC was a case-based discussion. Two cases (Ulcerative Colitis and Crohn’s Disease) were presented and discussed with a panel of experts that included Britta Siegmund (ECCO President Elect), Gerhard Rogler, Glen Doherty and Jean-Frédéric Colombel. Although this was a virtual meeting, it was a real success in terms of interest and interaction, with a wealth of suggestions and questions coming from the audience via the virtual platform chat.

After this great first experience, we are looking forward to the second edition. We thank the outstanding invested faculty and everyone who participated in the PGC for being such an incredible audience.

Best wishes,    

Pascal Juillerat and Henit Yanai

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