Spyros Siakavellas © Spyros Siakavellas

Dear ECCO friends and family,

It is my pleasure to introduce the ECCO National Representatives of Portugal Helena Tavares de Sousa and Samuel Fernandes. We had an intriguing discussion on a wide range of topics such as the challenges of treating IBD in Portugal, how GEDII their national IBD group helps with clinical management but also research projects, what Portugal is doing right in producing a lot of inspiring figures in Gastroenterology that lead the European Gastroenterology Organisations like ECCO president-elect Fernando Magro, but also for their respective areas of research interest namely intestinal fibrosis for Helena and transmural inflammation for Samuel and much more!

I hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

Spyros Siakavellas
ECCO News Associate Editor

Dear colleagues,

Welcome again to a new episode of the JCC Podcast in ECCO News!

We know that there is a "window of opportunity", where starting an effective therapy can improve outcomes in Crohn´s disease. This is also the case for early introduction of anti-TNFs but, how early should we start it to change the natural history of the disease?

To answer that question, we are featuring a brief conversation about the article Early intervention with biologic therapy in Crohn´s disease: how early is early? recently published in JCC, with first author Joana Reves from Portugal.

We hope you find it interesting and useful for your clinical practice!

Thanks for joining us.

Best regards,

Ignacio Catalan-Serra

Dear ECCO Friends,

Welcome to this new episode of the Meet the JCC Authors Podcast!

Here, we interview the rising star of intestinal ultrasound (IUS), Michael Dolinger from Mount Sinai Hospital (NY, US), about his recent article in JCC entitled: “Early intestinal ultrasound response to biologic therapy predicts endoscopic remission in children with ileal Crohn's Disease: Results from the Prospective Super Sonic Study”.

We discuss the increasing use of IUS as a tool to predict response to therapies in treat-to-target strategies in both children and adults and how it can identify those patients who will achieve endoscopic remission. In addition, we talk about Michael’s journey and the introduction of IUS in the United States, the learning curves, the future of IUS in IBD, new technologies and much more.

We hope you enjoy it!

Ignacio Catalan-Serra
ECCO News Associate Editor