This year’s most important Weight-loss Surgery meeting was held in the beautiful city of Hamburg, Germany . Many of the most recognized leaders in the Bariatric Surgery field were present during this whole week event.
The scientific program included the latest research on well known and established weight-loss surgical techniques as well as new and upcoming procedures like the gastric plication, which had the attention of much of the congress attendees. The scientific program had some speakers briefly talk about their experience with this new procedure but all attention was focused on the Gastric Plication Session that Friday at noon. The Chairman was well known Surgeon from Cleveland Clinics Dr Phil Schauer (USA). A total of eight speakers from every corner of the world participated in this highly anticipated session. Dr Talebpour (Iran) considered the pioneer of the procedure was a moderator and speaker, presenting a multi-center experience of over 800 procedures. Dr Schauer compared the Gastric Plication to the Gastric Sleeve with the available data in the medical literature. Other notable presentations included Dr Ramos’s Group (Brasil) describing the innovative use of plication as a rescue technique when other procedures have failed including Gastric Sleeve Surgery and Gastric ByPass. Lastly Dr Ortiz (Mexico) presented the second largest experience with 400 cases of Gastric Plication Procedures. In his presentation he focused on recent technical advances that his group has developed to perform a safer more effective procedure. He described the most frequent complications and how to avoid them. Lastly, he presented a 1 year follow-up on over half of these patients with an average weight-loss of 60%. He concluded by asking those interested in performing this procedure to undergo formal training before attempting this technique.
With over 2500 congress goers, this meeting definitely qualifies as one of the largest IFSO has every seen. More to come.
