Report on the 81st ECCO Educational Workshop in Vilnius, Lithuania

The workshop was organised by the ECCO Office together with local experts and organising team, represented by Goda Sadauskaitė, Ieva Stundienė, Juozas Kupčinskas, Gediminas Kiudelis and Laimas Jonaitis. The local expert faculty was joined by ECCO Faculty members Charlotte Hedin from Sweden and Uri Kopylov from Israel, bringing together local clinical experience and an international perspective on challenging aspects of IBD management. Around 50 participants registered for the workshop.

The programme was divided into two sessions, focusing on Crohn’s Disease in the morning and Ulcerative Colitis in the afternoon. Six real-life clinical cases formed the core of the workshop. Each case presented a challenging clinical situation and included interactive voting at key decision points, allowing participants to consider their approach before discussing the available evidence, ECCO algorithms and the subsequent course of the patient.

The workshop demonstrated the value of combining ECCO guidance with real-life clinical experience. Rather than simply reviewing recommendations, participants were challenged to apply ECCO e-Guide algorithms to complex and sometimes ambiguous clinical situations, discuss different approaches and reflect on how evidence-based recommendations can be translated into individual patient care.

The workshop was enriched by two state-of-the-art lectures delivered by the ECCO Faculty. Charlotte Hedin addressed the increasingly relevant topic of “Managing IBD in Patients with a History of Cancer: Evidence Beyond the Guidelines”, while Uri Kopylov explored “Obesity, MASLD and IBD: The New Frontier in Gastroenterology”. Together, the two lectures broadened the perspective beyond individual clinical cases, addressing important and evolving challenges in contemporary IBD care.

We would like to sincerely thank the ECCO Faculty, the local expert faculty, the ECCO Office and all participants for their active contribution to the workshop. The excellent engagement, open discussions and exchange of clinical experience made the 81st ECCO Educational Workshop in Vilnius a valuable and memorable educational meeting.