Revised plenary format among new AGA offerings at DDW

Abstract

The annual Digestive Disease Week, widely known as DDW, is the largest international gathering of physicians, researchers, and academics in gastroenterology, hepatology, endoscopy, and gastrointestinal surgery. Jointly sponsored by the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD), the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA), the American Society for Gastrointestinal Surgery (ASGE), and the Society for Surgery of the Alimentary Tract (SSAT), DDW occurs every May in cities throughout the U.S. The 2004 meeting will be held in New Orleans, Louisiana, May 15–20. For the edification of more than 14,000 attendees, DDW will showcase approximately 5000 abstracts and hundreds of lectures on the latest advances in GI research, medicine, and technology. The AGA Plenary session, Tuesday, May 17, features a new format that will include 2 concurrent tracks (basic and clinical) in segment 1 and the Presidential Plenary in segment 2. There will be 5 Distinguished Abstract Plenary presentations and one state-of-the-art lecture in each concurrent session. “We tried to make this year’s Plenary more interesting and relevant to attendees as possible,” says Dr. Loren Laine, Chair of the AGA Council and Professor of Medicine in the Division of Gastrointestinal and Liver Diseases at the University of Southern California. Laine notes that the “breadth of the AGA’s overall offerings to the GI community is reflected in the association’s extensive programming at DDW, which ranges from basic science to clinical practice to practice management issues.” Also in the AGA program at DDW are Problem-Based Learning Luncheon Sessions. Offered by the AGA Education Committee, these sessions involve discussion of real-life case presentations by a small group with the teacher as a facilitator. The group identifies the relevant facts, hypotheses, and learning agenda items and resolves the problem put forth in the case presentation. One-hour State of the Art lectures this year vary widely. A sampling includes angiogenesis and cancer, biomedical-imaging research, chemopreventive strategies for GI malignancy, and selective adhesion molecules as targets for IBD. For this year’s AGA Morton I. Grossman Distinguished Lectureship, Dr. Elizabeth H. Blackburn of the University of California, San Francisco, describes her recent work and progress to date on targeting telomeres and telomerase. Her work shows that altering the action of telomerase can block tumor cell growth. For the John Walsh Memorial Lecture, Dr. Laine discusses treatment and prevention of ulcer bleeding. AGA has also created Focused Clinical Updates to help participants choose the “must-see” abstracts. In each breakfast session, an expert moderator will review and preview selected abstracts from the DDW Program. Prior to the meeting, registrants will be sent a link to a Web site where they can download and print abstracts to be presented during the sessions. “The AGA Council has worked diligently to develop a program of invited speakers and research-driven sessions that will be of great interest and value to our members,” Laine says. For more details, go to http://www.ddw.org/