Volume 18, Issue 1

The 18th 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.

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 18th 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 professio

At the recent 18th 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 ...

In Crohn’s Disease (CD), the treat-to-target strategy has become the standard of care [1, 2]. This clinical concept consists in escalating/optimising the treatment (e.g. dose, frequency, type of drugs) until a state of remission (target) is achieved. Overall, treatment targets evolve towards a deeper level of remission and it is in this context that endoscopic remission has become a primary objective. However, endoscopy remains invasive and costly, is not well accepted by patients and does not allow tight control of disease activity. Thus, attention is turning to non-invasive biomarkers ...

Appendectomy at age citis or mesenteric lymphadenitis has been associated with a lower risk of Ulcerative Colitis (UC), but this association has not been detected when appendectomy is performed at an older age or for non-specific abdominal pain. Similar findings have been reported upon combining data from Swedish and Danish registers. However, in a Danish cohort study of familial units, individuals who had first-degree relatives with appendicitis, but no personal history of appendicitis, at age