Isabelle Cleynen  ©  ECCO

Dear Y-ECCO Friends,

This will be the last time that I address you as Y-ECCO Chair. At the next ECCO Congress (2018, Vienna), I shall be stepping down and it is with great pleasure that I will then hand over the position of Chair to Nuha Yassin (UK), who has been serving on the Committee for three years. There will also be a new member joining the Committee, for which the selection process has been completed. We received seven excellent applications, and would like to encourage those who were not selected this time to re-apply in coming years.

Miranda Lomer  ©  ECCO

At least a third of patients with inactive IBD have coexisting functional bowel symptoms (e.g.  abdominal pain, bloating, increased flatulence, diarrhoea and/or constipation) and these symptoms may be mistaken for active IBD. Patients may also experience increased anxiety/depression and reduced quality of life. Objective markers of disease activity (histological and inflammatory markers, e.g. faecal calprotectin, C-reactive protein), in conjunction with assessment of clinical symptoms, help to distinguish between functional bowel symptoms and active IBD. Identification of functional bowel symptoms in inactive IBD is important to avoid unnecessary and potentially harmful treatment strategies; on the other hand, active disease should be excluded before establishing that symptoms are functional in nature.

Vincenzo Villanacci  ©  ECCO

The Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (IBD) Crohn’s Disease (CD) and Ulcerative Colitis (UC) are characterised by flares and remission, reflecting the pathological status of the inflamed intestinal tract. For decades, the treatment goal for IBD was the achievement of clinical response or remission. More recently, however, the normalisation of laboratory parameters and intestinal mucosa, termed mucosal healing (MH), has been considered a major target to prevent extra-intestinal complications and achieve sustained clinical remission. 

Richard Russell  ©  ECCO

The revision of the Paediatric UC Guideline for children has been carried out jointly by the ESPGHAN Porto IBD group and ECCO. This revised guideline has updated the previous separate guidelines on Acute Severe UC and Ambulatory UC [1,2] and combined them into one document. The guideline was developed on the basis of an intensive literature search and careful evidence grading; the Oxford levels of evidence were used for the latter purpose after it became clear that the guideline was being developed too soon for the use of GRADE methodology. A summary of all the evidence assimilated during the guideline development will be published as supplementary tables so that others can benefit from the intensive search without having to redo the work.

Paulo Kotze  ©  ECCO

Florianópolis, Brazil, October 2017

The 4th S-ECCO International IBD Workshop was held in Florianópolis, south of Brazil, on October 5–7, 2017. The meeting is already a tradition in the local IBD community, as this was the third local edition, organised by the Brazilian IBD Study Group (GEDIIB). Approximately 200 gastroenterologists and surgeons from Latin America attended the Workshop. 

Paulo Kotze  ©  ECCO

Cancun, Mexico, August 2017

This S-ECCO session took place in the beautiful city of Cancun, on August 14, 2017, during the Mexican Congress of Colorectal Surgery. A significant part of the first day of the congress, within the main hall, was devoted to interesting medical and surgical IBD topics as part of the main core programme.

Palle Bager  ©  ECCO

The overarching aim of ECCO is to improve the care of patients with IBD in all its aspects through international guidelines for practice, education, research and collaboration in the area of IBD. For several years, ECCO has been exploring ways to increase nurse education opportunities throughout Europe. In addition to the three nursing Educational Activities that are offered at the ECCO Congress each year, ECCO will start a brand new IBD Nurse Education Programme in 2018. This programme is being developed collaboratively by N-ECCO and the ECCO Education Committee.

Christian Maaser  ©  ECCO

GuiCom, together with various ECCO Members, is constantly working to bring the ECCO Guidelines up to date, thereby helping IBD physicians to treat their patients. The most recent project, the Diagnostic IBD Guideline, will set out what to do for the following purposes: initial diagnosis, evaluation of treatment response, assessment of the asymptomatic patient, clarification of postoperative situations and investigation of suspected complications. In addition, one chapter will deal with the various scoring systems and another with the technical details of the different methods.

Marieke Pierik  ©  ECCO

The Epidemiological Committee (EpiCom) of ECCO promotes epidemiological research within the field of Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (IBD) across Europe. Population-based cohort studies on disease course and prognosis are of great interest for IBD epidemiology since in these cohorts a sample or all of the cases in a defined population are selected for longitudinal assessment of exposure–outcome relationships. 

Marc Ferrante  ©  ECCO

Following the success of the previous workshops, the Clinical Research Committee (ClinCom) of ECCO will run a sixth workshop in 2018.

During past years, endpoints in clinical trials for patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) have evolved substantially. Initially we mainly aimed for clinical remission, but it has become obvious that this is certainly insufficient to alter the natural history of the disease.