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SAN FRANCISCO -- Clinical and translational medicine will intersect with basic science in hepatology once again at the annual Liver Meeting here.
Sponsored by the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD), the meeting features several tracks for different types of practitioners, with a few tweaks this year for one of its marquee events. The meeting will be held at the Moscone Center in San Francisco from Friday, Nov. 9, to Tuesday, Nov. 13.
"We encourage everybody to keep in mind that they have opportunities to learn something that would enhance their clinical practice, and get up to speed on the latest clinical and translational science, as well as the cutting-edge basic science that The Liver Meeting is known for," Kris Kowdley, MD, director of the Liver Care Network, and Organ Care Research at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle, and vice-chair of the AASLD's Clinical Practice Special Interest Group, told MedPage Today.
In terms of changes to the meeting this year, he said that historically, the all-day Postgraduate Course, which will be held on Nov. 10, covered a single theme. But this year's theme, "A Hectic Day for a Hepatology Consultant," spans a range of discussion topics.
Kowdley said that course is a "day in the life" -- from different types of office consultation to inpatient consultation. Topics, he said, will range from seeing patients in a clinic to consulting in the ICU on a patient with acute liver failure or severe alcoholic liver disease to what other kinds of liver problems a clinician sees in other areas of the hospital, such as with bone marrow transplantation.
"It's a very practical, interesting, practitioner-oriented type of course," Kowdley said.
The plenary sessions begin on Sunday. Kowdley highlighted the Thomas E. Starzl Transplant Surgery State-of-the-Art Lecture (9:30-10:00 am), which will address "the current challenges and opportunities in patients with hepatobiliary cancer."
The Emerging Trends Symposium on Monday, Nov. 12, is titled "The Palliative Care Toolkit: Practical Strategies for Integrating Palliative Care into the Management of Patients with Cirrhosis."
"One of the things we've emphasized and we need to do more of is address the many patients with liver disease who need palliative care," Kowdley said, adding that the symposium will highlight "practical strategies for integrating palliative care in patients with cirrhosis."
If attendees can stick around for the last day of the meeting, they can attend the Leon Schiff State-of-the-Art Lecture, "NASH [non-alcoholic steatohepatitis] -- Race for a Cure."
"With 15 million to 18 million Americans estimated as having NASH, it's recognized to be the most consequential liver disease," Kowdley said. "NASH is rapidly becoming a leading indication for liver transplantation. It's an important cause for liver cancer, and there's a tremendous amount of interest in trying to develop new treatments for NASH, with several large phase III trials underway."
Of course, cutting edge research is a cornerstone of the liver meeting, and this year's late-breaker oral abstract sessions are on Monday and Tuesday. This year, research will be presented about biomarkers for alcoholic hepatitis, as well as potential new therapies for NASH and primary biliary cholangitis.
For those who missed some sessions, there will be midday "Debrief" events on Tuesday -- for example, the Hepatitis, NAFLD [Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease], and Clinical Hepatology Debriefs are half-hour sessions.
"Each session will summarize key abstracts presented at The Liver Meeting," Kowdley said. "It's a great opportunity to get caught up."