Delegates to next week’s Australian Gastroenterology Week (AGW 2016) can expect a shorter, sharper program than previous years and a focus on inter-disciplinarity across the theme of Innovations in Medicine.
Chair of the scientific program committee Associate Professor Alex Boussioutas told the limbic that sessions would also focus on translational science.
“For example, within our session on the microbiome and IBD we will have discussion ranging from basic science perspectives through to clinical applications. We’ll be working through the microbiome as an evolving concept, the effects of diet, animal experiments, and exclusive enteral nutrition.”
Reflecting its high prevalence in Australia and New Zealand, colorectal cancer remains a large component of the program including a stream on screening.
“Faecal immunochemical testing is the mainstay of our screening strategy but DNA and RNA based methodologies will also be discussed,” Professor Boussioutas said.
“There is also a pleasing multi-disciplinarity in the program with GPs, epidemiologists and government representatives. Certainly GPs need to be engaged in discussions from a screening perspective and more interaction with them is critical. We’ll also be seeing national debate around health economics.”
Professor Linda Rabeneck, vice president of prevention and cancer control at Cancer Care Ontario in Canada, will deliver the Bushell Lecture in the Opening Plenary session (Monday, 10.30-12.30) and join Australian and New Zealand colleagues in a session on Big Data: Population Programs in Australasia and Canada (Monday 1.30-3.30).
Professor Boussioutas said hepatitis C remained an exciting topic with government approval for the highly efficacious direct-acting antivirals.
“Treatment in difficult populations such as patients with cirrhosis is one of the remaining questions. Will there be trouble with the new drugs in different genotypes? Will there be resistance and what about future treatments?”
“We see 99-100% eradication rates but is there going to be 5-10% of the hepatitis C patients we cannot treat?”
You can view the full conference program here.
Watch out for our news live from Adelaide next week. We’ll also be exhibiting so make sure you come and say hello.