Report of EFSUMB Activities in 2012 from EFSUMB President Fabio Piscaglia

During last year activities have been actively running and the following are some of the most relevant topics:

• For the first time the EUROSON meeting took place in Spain (Madrid). This was a successful event, with the conjunct participation of different speciality societies, together with the multidisciplinary Spanish society.

• The CEUS non liver guidelines were published in the first 2012 issue of our official journal „Ultraschall in der Medizin / European Journal of Ultrasound“, dispatched to all EFSUMB members. At the end of the year the CEUS liver guidelines went e-pub. The latter were published simultanously in our journal and in the journal of the WFUMB, to represent the joint efforts of these two Federations to produce the document.

• The preparation of Technological and Clinical Recommendations on the use of ultrasound Elastography has been ongoing during the whole year and is expected to be published online and subsequentely to appear in a printed version within 2013. Part 1 of the document will deal with the basics of ultrasound elastography, aimed at clarifying the different modalities currently on the market, which produce different types of elastography, including strain elastography and various shear wave modalities. Part 2 will present the current recommended clinical applications. This document will keep EFSUMB at the forefront of ultrasound worldwide, being the first guidelines released by a multidisciplinary ultrasound society.

• The European Course Book was finally printed and is now available to be ordered. This book is, in the opinion of the EFSUMB officers, an outstanding production, with an extremely good quality / cost ratio, as it can be read for free from the EFSUMB website and but is also rather cheap to be purchased as a printed book with colour figures.

• The EFSUMB website has been enriched constantly. The case of the month receives many thousand visits per month and is now translated in several languages. New cases from all EFSUMB members are welcome and can provide great visibility to the authors.

• EFSUMB has proposed a new term, Echoscopy, for bedside focused, clinically simple applications than can be carried out also with pocket size scanners. A more detailed EFSUMB position on this topic, very relevant for everybody, but expecially for clinicians, is reported in this newsletter.

• More information of EFSUMB activities to the individual national members is expected. To this aim EFSUMB has asked its delegates to inform all national members about EFSUMB activities in 2013 in their own national languages.

• In 2012 the EFSUMB Education Committee approved 8 Euroson Schools in 5 countries, with a successful Elastography School held in Athens, Greece, for the first time and the year ended with the Hannover CEUS School which is now so popular the course is oversubscribed. The EPSC endorsed 11 courses from Peru to Romania, the latter offering an impressive 6 endorsed courses during the year.

• Educational activities carried out within the EFSUMB mainframe are to be adequately recognized. Therefore EFSUMB decided to start releasing EFSUMB educational credits to acknowledge participation in its educational activities. Recognition of these credits by a national agency is not guaranteed and should be specifically verified (a universal recognition is in fact impossible on a European basis, given the different systems active in different countries, which are not mutually recognized).

• Online education continues with the postgraduate web course which can be completed online to receive the EFSUMB CME certificate.

• The Executive Bureau activities are carried out on a regular basis, thanks also to the support of Internet supported Conference Calls, which allow meetings on nearly a monthly basis with no additional cost. This modality is being experimented also by the EFSUMB Committees.

• EFSUMB was represented at various meetings ECR, UEG Week, EASL and Dreilandertreffen in 2012 to promote our activities.

• The Educational Portal hosts two e.Pub books which can be downloaded for free; Hepatic Elastography using Ultrasound Waves, edited by Prof Ioan Sporea and Dr Roxana Sirli and The Safe Use of Ultrasound in Medical Diagnosis, edited by Dr Gail ter Haar.

• A position statement on safety of elastography has been released by the ECMUS Committee.

We look forward to working closely with our National Societies in 2013 to continue building the European ultrasound community.