NEWS

ESGE Days 2023: ‘One hundred thousand welcomes’ to Ireland’s capital by the ESGE

The European Society of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy was thrilled to host ESGE Days 2023 between April 20-23, in Dublin, Ireland, and online. With over 3000 onsite hybrid registrations and over 750 online registrations we couldn’t be happier to bring the endoscopic community together again to share science, education, and inspiration at what has become Europe’s premier endoscopy focused meeting.

Our venue was the Convention Centre Dublin, with it’s beautiful glass-fronted atrium providing panoramic views of the River Liffey and city centre. Digital delegates enjoyed the state-of-the-art digital platform created by our technical team CYIM, offering an intuitive, easy to use site. Alongside all scientific content, networking opportunities were also offered online, plus our stream from the Spotlight Studio which was designed to give delegates at home a taste of the discussions taking place on site.

As always, scientific abstracts formed the backbone of the meeting. ESGE Days 2023 received a record breaking 1289 abstract submissions from 55 different countries, and those accepted have been published in the Endoscopy journal supplement which can be found here. Onsite, abstracts were showcased via free-paper presentation sessions, ePoster stations, plus new for this year we also held Poster Tours. In particular, the free paper presentation sessions were very well attended, with rooms often filled to capacity.

The Scientific Programme saw a maximum of seven concurrent sessions running across the three days. The auditorium featured plenary sessions, including best abstract presentations, Irish Society of Gastroenterology Symposia and live endoscopy demonstrations that streamed from Hamburg, Germany and London, UK all day on Friday. New for this year, the live demonstrations were presented in a set order: Upper GI, HPB and colon. This allowed delegates to plan their time more effectively and catch the procedures that are of greatest interest to them. Also well attended were our guideline, case, video and joint society sessions. A major theme across the meeting was green endoscopy, and as part of the event’s carbon offsetting programme over 550 native Irish trees were planted to develop Ireland’s forests.

• This year a new Postgraduate Course was launched offering a unique augmented learning opportunity. In advance of the meeting, delegates could watch the modules online and submit any questions or requests for further details they may have direct to the tutors. During the live event ‘Meet the expert’ sessions offered the chance to dive deeper into the subjects, with the delegate questions driving discussion.
• 54 exhibitors joined the event and were represented with booths in our exhibition. As well as long-standing Premium Partners (Alfasigma, Boston Scientific, Cook Medical, Erbe, Fujifilm, Medtronic, Micro-Tech, Olympus and Pentax Medical), we were happily joined by many first-time exhibitors.
• The ESGE Research Champions’ Den saw 10 researchers present their projects to a panel of ESGE expert ‘Dragons’ Evelien Dekker, Nageshwar Reddy, Michael Bretthauer, Vicente Lorenzo-Zúñiga García and chairman Pradeep Bhandari. After tough grilling Louis-Jean Masgnaux, Pedro López-Muñoz, and Ivo Boskoski, on behalf of Martina De Siena, were each awarded 10,000 Euro.
• New for this year was the ‘ESGE Days Quiz’, hosted by Thierry Ponchon, Hilary Hamilton-Gibbs and Keith Siau. The session was packed to capacity and saw a fun filled, as well as nail biting, battle to answer entertaining and challenging questions. Congratulations to the winners Ana Rita Santos Franco, Fábio Correia and Erlend Magnussen.
• The Hands-On Training sessions, which are always a highlight of ESGE Days, included seven new cutting-edge training opportunities. All sessions were sold out by the end of February.
• ESGENA played a vital role as scientific partner for our meeting, and in addition to their cooperation in the Hands-On training sessions, the ESGENA Spring School and the ESGENA Joint Sessions, they also hosted the ESGENA HOT spot, which provided nurse-focused Hands-On Training opportunities.

ESGE President Ian Gralnek, ESGE Past President Helmut Messmann and the entire ESGE Governing Board would like to pass on their thanks to all involved in ESGE Days 2023 and look forward to meeting you again in Berlin for ESGE Days 2024.