SPED @ Portuguese Digestive Week 2019

The Portuguese Digestive Week 2019 is on its way to be held next May and Digestive Endoscopy will be again on the hotspot.

The Postgraduate Course that lasts a full day will be devoted to the theme “Digestive endoscopy: evolutive, disruptive or both?” where the major topics to be debated will focus on the current standards versus the upcoming technologies or evolutions such as:

1. Dysplasia detection by advanced endoscopic image or random biopsies: in Barrett's oesophagus (versus the Seattle protocol), gastritis grading (versus the MAPS protocol) and Ulcerative Colitis assessment (versus multiple biopsies protocol);

2. Lesion Detection: current endoscopy diagnosis and the place for Artificial Intelligence;

3. The muscle layer as the limit for current resection techniques when considering new approaches such as: NOTES (natural orifice transluminal endoscopic surgery), FTER (full thickness endoscopic resection), Endoscopic Ultrasound guided drainages, POEM (peroral endoscopic myotomy) and excision of subepithelial lesions of the muscle layer;

4. Digestive endoscopy in the treatment of obesity by intragastric balloon but also new techniques such as luminal reduction techniques or Duodenal Mucosal Resurfacing;

5. Training in digestive endoscopy: who can do it? What should be performed by all gastroenterologists and what should be reserved for some, and how to adapt training to evolution.

Also, during the following two and a half days of the main programme, which is usually attended by around 500 people devoted to Gastroenterology, digestive endoscopy will also have relevant round tables to debate issues such as:

1. The Medical-Legal aspect of digestive endoscopy (a very hot topic in recent years in our country due to a paradigm shift);

2. The performance measures for endoscopy services (spreading the ESGE recommendations on this topic);

3. A debate about the upcoming Portuguese National Colorectal Cancer Screening Programme (planned to be by primary FIT followed by colonoscopy for positive cases but with many Portuguese gastroenterologists still preferring colonoscopy as the primary method);

4. The malignant polyp excised without curative criteria (presented from a daily basis clinical point of view);

5. The current practice for reflux disease: recommended investigations, acid block for life, advantages and disadvantages of proton pump inhibitors and surgery;

6. The spectrum of Barrett’s disease: from screening to histology, handling situations without or with low/grade dysplasia and efficacy/relapse of radiofrequency ablation;

7. And finally, as usual, an update on colonic polyp’s management regarding histological classifications, synchronous lesions, lesions less than 10mm: leave or remove (cold polypectomy efficacy, limits and complications) and the higher frequency of polypectomy in patients on antiplatelet or anticoagulant therapy.

The Portuguese Society of Digestive Endoscopy (SPED) is very proud of this programme, and we hope that our associates will find it interesting and relevant for their endoscopic practice.

Hope to see you all in Vilamoura!

More information at the event’s website: www.semanadigestiva.pt

On behalf of SPED
Areia M, Almeida N, Dinis-Ribeiro M