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Healio to report live from World Congress of Gastroenterology at ACG 2017
ORLANDO — Starting Monday, October 16, Healio Gastroenterology and Liver Disease will provide live coverage as the exclusive media partner of the World Congress of Gastroenterology at ACG2017.
Following the 3-day postgraduate course, this year’s scientific meeting at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Fla., represents a unique collaboration between the ACG and the World Gastroenterology Organization (WGO), which lends a global perspective to the scientific program, according to ACG Public Relations Committee Chair Jordan J. Karlitz, MD, FACG, of Tulane Cancer Center in New Orleans.
“This collaboration with the WGO is a first for the ACG, and this year’s meeting is the first time the World Congress of Gastroenterology will be held in the U.S. in more than 20 years, and the third time in nearly 50 years,” he told Healio Gastroenterology and Liver Disease. “This is a unique opportunity, which will lead to increased attendance, cutting edge research and clinical courses.”
While attendance is expected to be among the highest for an ACG annual meeting, this year’s meeting will also include a record number of abstracts, according to Seth A. Gross, MD, FACG, of the WCOG at ACG2017 Scientific Planning Committee, chief of gastroenterology at Tisch Hospital, NYU Langone Medical Center, and associate professor of medicine at NYU School of Medicine.
“This year is really special, because we’re going to have many more clinical sessions running the gamut of clinical gastroenterology, hepatology and endoscopy,” he said in an interview. “In addition, we have a world class faculty and speakers coming from all over the world to discuss how we’re tackling the common conditions we see in gastroenterology on a global level.”
Carolina Olano, MD, Med, of the WCOG at ACG2017 Scientific Planning Committee and Universidad de la República in Montevideo, Uruguay, agreed that in addition to the global scope of the scientific program, regular ACG attendees can look forward to discussing emerging topics with international colleagues this year.
“They will also have the opportunity to discuss face-to-face with researchers from all over the world and to exchange experiences in order to improve outcomes,” she told Healio Gastroenterology and Liver Disease.
Olano added that the WGO will provide a symposium on global education to teach attendees about the WGO training centers, the Train the Trainers program, and the WGO global guidelines.
These guidelines “include global epidemiology by searching regional data sets from Africa, South-East Asia, Latin America and Middle East,” she said. “They are available in different languages (Spanish, English, Portuguese, French, Mandarin and Russian), and they use ‘context and resource sensitive’ cascades to produce strategies that are clinically sound yet economically feasible and acceptable to different populations.”
Research highlights
Important highlights among this year’s scientific presentations include topics like global approaches to colorectal cancer screening, H. pylori infection, IBS, hepatitis C and B, endosurgery in the upper GI tract, management of pancreatic cysts and advances in fecal microbiota transplant, according to the WCOG at ACG2017 committee members.
“Attendees should look out for topics on colorectal cancer (CRC), especially early-onset CRC, which is increasing in patients under age 55,” Karlitz said. “Another important topic will be the effects of smoking in various GI diseases, and attendees should also be on the lookout for abstracts on Clostridium difficile infection, opioid use, inflammatory bowel disease, colonoscopy quality, and burnout among health care providers, which has received a lot of attention in recent years.”
The top 10 abstracts to be shared at the Presidential Plenary are particularly notable, Gross said. These include research on “the role of different types of precancerous polyps and their impact on colon cancer screening and surveillance, [and] some randomized controlled trial data on acute pancreatitis, a common condition we see here in the U.S.”
Additionally, this session will include some important new hepatology research, including abstracts on the relationship between nonalcoholic fatty liver disease and diabetes, Gross added.
“Lastly, in recent years we’ve been focusing on specific diseases and how they impact different populations, both in the U.S. and globally,” he said. “One such study will look at the impact of certain type of pancreatic cysts in the African American population.”
Further, Olando noted that the Small Bowel, Miscellaneous, and Practice Management Planning Subcommittee, which she chaired, was tasked with integrating “topics that are relevant in different parts of the world and emerging diseases that needed a global discussion to improve their diagnosis and/or treatment.”
These hot topics will include “gluten-related disorders (celiac disease, its complications and non-celiac gluten sensitivity), acute and chronic diarrhea (fundamentally the diagnosis and prevention of acute diarrhea, a medical problem worldwide) and small bowel bleeding (the use of endoscopic and radiologic tools for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes),” she said. “Crohn’s disease was also considered a hot topic, especially its medical-surgical management and its clinical dilemmas.”
Gross said he looks forward to the wide array of science being presented this year. “This is pretty unique because this type of collaboration doesn’t happen all that often, and we’re really excited for all the discussion about the presentation of all this high quality scientific work,” he noted.
Healio Gastroenterology and Liver Disease staff will report live on breaking news presented at the meeting and capture video interviews with experts to gain their perspectives on important presentations. Visit and follow @HealioGastro on Twitter for the latest news emerging from #WCOGatACG2017. – by Adam Leitenberger