29 WORLD GASTROENTEROLOGY NEWS MAY 2016 Editorial | Expert Point of View | Gastro 2016: EGHS-WGO | WDHD News | WGO & WGOF News | WGO Global Guidelines | Calendar of Events Summary of the Annual Scientific Meeting of the New Zealand Society of Gastroenterology Michael Schultz, MD, PhD Associate Professor Department of Medicine University of Otago Dunedin, New Zealand The 49th Annual Scientific Meeting of the New Zealand Society of Gastro-enterology (NZSG) was held from 25-27 November in the beautiful and exotic city of Rotorua in the North Is-land. The meeting is a highlight in the New Zealand conference calendar and was organized in conjunction with the New Zealand Nurses Organisation Gastroenterology Nurses Section. The well attended meeting started off with the 2nd Gut Health Network Satellite Meeting (www.guthealth-network. com) with Professor Rupert Leong from the University of Sydney and New South Wales, Australia as the key note speaker. Prof. Leong looked critically at the “Achievements of the fundamental sciences in the advance-ment of diagnosis and treatment of Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (IBD).” His talk was flanked not only by presentations of the patient support groups, affiliated with the Gut Health Network, but also by established and emerging New Zealand researchers from a variety of disciplines. Results were presented on vitamin D levels in IBD, molecular techniques in colorec-tal cancer (CRC) screening, diagnosis and therapy of gastric dysrhythmias, the effect of exclusive enteral nutri-tion on biomarkers in IBD, and the expression and distribution of tight junctions in human colinic enteroids in response to TNF-alpha. This excit-ing afternoon meeting was closed by a presentation on the microbiology of pouchitis. The meeting proper started on the 25th of November with a rousing Powhiri (traditional Maori Wel-come) and the arrival of our eminent international speakers. The overall theme of the meeting was the influ-ence of ethnicity on epidemiology, diagnosis, and treatment of gastroin-testinal disorders. In this regard, we were fortunate enough to be able to welcome Associate Professor James Ward, Head of the Infectious Diseases Research Program at the Australian NHMRC Centre of Research Excel-lence in Population Health Research, who throughout the meeting lectured on the ethnic differences in infectious hepatitis, especially Hepatitis B and C in Australasia. Dr. Michael Heneghan, Hepatologist and Transplant Physician from the London Liver Centre, Lon-don, UK, presented a global overview of Autoimmune Hepatitis, lectured on liver disease in pregnancy, and provided new insights into cholestatic liver disease. The key note nursing speaker Anne Murphy, Ireland, looked at the world-wide differences in the approach to CRC screening. Individual sessions looked at a variety of topics. Ethnic differences in epidemiology and the response to treatment is especially relevant considering New Zealand’s multi-cultural population. Hepatitis B is Award presentation at the conference din-ner. very common amongst people of Maori and Pacific Island descent, while Hepatitis C (HCV) is more prevalent in Europeans. Important in light of the long-awaited introduction of a national bowel cancer screening program, Associate Professor Diane Safarti from the University of Otago, Wellington highlighted difficulties to reach and motivate certain population groups to come forward for screening. Several further sessions touched on various aspects of the screening pro-gram, including quality improvement strategies, training, accreditation, and the introduction of nurse endos-copists. Dr. Gabriel Lau, Southern District Health Board, informed us on the value and limitations of CT colo-nography while Dr. Chris Jackson, University of Otago, Dunedin and Medical Director of the New Zealand Cancer Society, presented the findings of the Post- Operative Crohn’s Endo-scopic Recurrent (POCER) study and
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