UEGW 2011 Report: Putting endoscopy into perspective

UEG Week 2013 highlights: putting endoscopy into perspective

“…ERCP and pancreatobiliary endoscopy maintained the importance they demonstrated at previous meetings [14,15]. For example, biliary drainage and stenting remained "hot" issues.…”

“…Gastrointestinal bleeding and endoscopic hemostasis is a field of endoscopy that attracts a lot of attention because technical advances can be rapidly incorporated into routine clinical practice. At UEG Week 2013, there were fewer abstracts on gastrointestinal bleeding compared with last year's meeting, continuing a trend that has been noted previously [14,15]. However, some innovative hemostatic techniques that were introduced at previous meetings appear to be finding their way into everyday practice.…”

“…These preliminary reports are in line with other recently published cases [22,23] and provide hope that the new spray will be used not only to control peptic ulcer or diffuse bleeds, but may also be an effective tool in treating portal hypertension-associated hemorrhage, which in many cases can be life threatening. The other "new" device that was presented as a hemostatic tool was the Over-The-Scope Clip (OTSC), which has been presented at previous UEG Weeks [15], mostly as a means of endoscopic closure for natural orifice transluminal endoscopic surgery [24,25]. This year, a multicenter Italian study attempted to evaluate whether, by compressing large amounts of tissue, the OTSC could be superior to "standard" (i. e. through the scope) clips for hemostasis in 48 consecutive patients who underwent emergency endoscopy for nonvariceal gastrointestinal bleeds (40 upper, 8 lower).…”

“…The push-and-pull techniques have some differences between them and, despite a lot of discussion regarding the superior modality [41,42], they can all be used effectively in the everyday clinical management of small-bowel pathologies. However, the fact that these modalities have gradually evolved from "novel" to "routine" has created a trend towards fewer enteroscopyrelated oral presentations at recent UEG Week meetings [14,15]. One of the few reports this year on new enteroscopes was on a prototype short single-balloon enteroscope designed for endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) in patients with surgically altered anatomy.…”

“…VCE was slightly better represented by oral presentations due to technical innovations or alterations that have been incorporated into the established VCE. Reports on VCE steering were presented at UEG Week 2010 [44] and since then there has been steady progression of this device including therapeutic attempts presented at the subsequent two meetings [14,15]. It seems that the quest for steerable VCE that can even perform biopsies and/or therapy is well underway [45,46].…”