23 WORLD GASTROENTEROLOGY NEWS APRIL 2015 Editorial | Expert Point of View | Gastro 2015: AGW/WGO | WDHD News | WGO & WGOF News | WGO Global Guidelines | Calendar of Events Iranian Congress of Gastroenterology and Hepatology 2014 Shahin Merat, MD Professor of Medicine Secretary, Iranian Congress of Gastroenterology and Hepatology 2014 (ICGH-2014) Deputy of Research, Digestive Disease Research Institute Tehran University of Medical Sciences Tehran, Iran The Iranian Congress of Gastroenterology and Hepatology (ICGH) is an annual event held by the Iranian Association of Gastroenterology and Hepatology (IAGH) and is the main meeting of gastroenterologists and hepatologists of Iran. The congress covers all topics related to gastroenterology and hepatology, especially new lines of research and future trends. The ICGH consists of a single-day postgraduate course followed by three days of congress sessions. Workshops are also held during the ICGH, usually endoscopy techniques, but occasionally non- endoscopic new technologies are also demonstrated. There is also an exhibition and a few industry-sponsored symposia. Last year, ICGH-2014 was held on November 18-21 in Tehran with close collaboration of the Digestive Disease Research Institute of Tehran University of Medical Sciences. The postgraduate course, which is designed for clinicians practicing in gastroenterology and hepatology, was attended by 200 participants. The course included an overview of important gastrointestinal and hepatic diseases and focused on conditions most common in Iran and those in which practice-changing events have occurred. The subjects were also selected through requests made by participants in previous years and comments left on the IAGH web page. Over 800 physicians and researchers registered for ICGH-2014. Admittance to the main congress sessions is free and everyone interested is welcome. Thus, the actual participants were well above 1,000 and included researchers, clinicians, medical students, and others involved or interested in the field. As the field of gastroenterology and hepatology is very diverse and cannot be fully covered in three days, ICGH focuses on gastrointestinal and hepatic disease in alternative years. In ICGH- 2014 the focus was hepatic disease, with almost 70% of lectures on this topic. In the next ICGH (ICGH- 2015) the focus will be gastrointestinal disease. Speakers are carefully selected from Iranian and international scientists. 2014 had nine invited lecturers from the USA and France, whose lectures helped improve the quality of the congress and postgraduate course. Sessions were held in two halls simultaneously and most sessions included an open-discussion panel in which important points were discussed with participants. The hottest topics at ICGH were probably the new treatments of hepatitis C and the role of microbiota in various diseases. The Iranian Congress of Gastroenterology and Hepatology logo in flowers. Attendees visit the Exhibition Hall at the Iranian Congress of Gastroenterology and Hepatology. Each day of the congress began with a key lecture delivered by one of the international guests. The key lectures were “Novel approaches to conducting healthcare research: graphical analysis and the use of effect sizes” by Dr. Louis Fogg from Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois, USA; “Hepatitis C: newer treatments” by Dr. Hatef Massoumi, Montefiore Medical Center of Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, New York, USA; and “Microbiota, Nonalcoholic Steatohepatitis, Metabolic Syndrome and Obesity” by Professor Ali Keshavarzian from Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
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