ASGE President Kenneth R. McQuaid, MD, FASGE, invites DDW® attendees to join him at this year’s Presidential Plenary, which will feature coffee and doughnuts served with the hottest topics in endoscopic science presented in “rapid fire” fashion by some of the most renowned clinicians and researchers in the field.
The plenary session will kick off ASGE’s programming at DDW 2017 on Saturday, May 6.
“Veteran DDW attendees will notice a few changes in the style and format of this year’s Presidential Plenary,” said Dr. McQuaid, chief of medical services and gastroenterology at San Francisco VA Medical Center and professor of medicine at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine.
“The first thing they will notice is that the plenary is being held earlier in the week,” he continued. “We moved it to the beginning of the meeting to get people excited and tuned in right away to the great science going on in the field of endoscopy.”
Another change is the way abstracts will be presented during the session. Each presenter will give quick, concise summaries of their most important findings rather than present the entire abstract.
“These are going to be two-and-a-half minute presentations, which will set up the topic for a subsequent state-of-the-art talk or a debate between two experts,” Dr. McQuaid said. “The abstracts and topics selected not only reflect some of the very best abstracts we reviewed, but ones that address areas in GI that are clinically relevant and still very much in question as to how we should approach them.”
The session’s first abstract presentation, for example, will report the findings of a prospective, randomized multicenter trial that compared the use of over-the-scope clips compared with standard endoscopic therapy in patients with recurrent peptic ulcer bleeding. The abstract presentation will be followed by a state-of-the-art lecture by ASGE Past President Christopher J. Gostout, MD, FASGE, who will discuss the trial’s findings in the context of the treatment of recurrent peptic ulcer bleeding.
“Another big issue is the administration of propofol sedation, including who should administer it and whether it leads to improved outcomes compared to moderate sedation with midazolam and opiates,” Dr. McQuaid said. “It is estimated that more than half of the procedures we do in this country are done with propofol sedation, generally administered by anesthesiologists or nurse anesthetists.”
Results of a European study suggest that nurse-administered propofol sedation is equally safe, but less costly than anesthesiologist-administered sedation. An abstract presentation on those findings will set the stage for a discussion by John Vargo, MD, MPH, FASGE, and Sarah A. (Betsy) Rodriguez, MD, FASGE, who will debate whether the U.S. practice of having anesthesiology providers deliver propofol sedation should be routine practice and whether it contributes to improved outcomes.
“We’ll have an abstract from another European trial that compared surgical and endoscopic step-up therapies for necrotizing pancreatitis,” Dr. McQuaid said. “The management of necrotizing pancreatitis is an area that has undergone rapid evolution over the last 20 years or so, from what was purely a surgical disease in the past to one that is treated more and more with minimally invasive procedures.”
The abstract presentation will be followed by the annual Stephen E. Silvis, MD, Endowed Lecture, which will be delivered by Martin L. Freeman, MD, FASGE, who will provide an overview of the endoscopic management of pancreatic necrosis.
Other abstracts, and the subsequent debates and lectures that follow them, will address unilateral versus bilateral stenting in the treatment of malignant hilar strictures; reducing the risk of duodenoscope-associated transmission of bacterial pathogens; the benefits, if any, to underwater colonoscopy; the variance of polypectomy competence between endoscopists and the correlation with existing quality metrics; and the expected incidence of interval colon cancers for an endoscopist in an active clinical practice.
Also during the plenary, Roy M. Soetikno, MD, FASGE, will present the J. Edward Berk, MD, DSC, FASGE Endowed Lecture. He will discuss strategies to detect easily overlooked lesions that could lead to colon cancer.
“The people we’ve engaged for the plenary are some of the top experts in their fields, and the topics they’ll be covering represent some of the top questions and challenges we’re facing right now,” Dr. McQuaid said. “I think attendees will be richly rewarded by the information we’re providing and will come away with a very clear perspective on current best practices and the state of the art in gastrointestinal endoscopy.”
The ASGE Presidential Plenary will also include the annual Presidential Address, delivered by Dr. McQuaid, and the inauguration of Karen L. Woods, MD, FASGE, clinical associate professor of medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, as the 2017-2018 ASGE president.