Report to Newsletter from chairman of EPSC

The Education and Professional Standards Committee has as one of its major roles to promote more post-graduate courses and particularly Euroson Schools to be arranged throughout Europe. Last year we had a record of 8 Euroson Schools in one year and for 2010 it looks as if at least 9 Euroson Schools will be taking place. Furthermore, as Europe is a leading force in clinical applications of CEUS, we have this year 4 Euroson Schools dedicated to the subject of CEUS. We have made a dedicated "start package", that can be downloaded from our website, to help new organisers of Euroson Schools.

At this moment of writing (primo July), the most recent Euroson School was held in Bergen, Norway: Abdominal ultrasound - Focus on CEUS and EUS. Altogether this post-graduate course gathered over 100 participants including industrial representatives and local committee.

Fig. 1 President-elect in EFSUMB Dr. Fabio Piscaglia in front of the World-Heritage site Bryggen in Bergen, where the Euroson School took place.

Fig. 2 Prof. Christoph F. Dietrich, here overlooking Bergen from Mount Fløyen, gave some excellent talks on various subjects.

Fig. 3 Prof. Michiel Postema from Holland and appointed Professor in Bergen gave an enthusiastic lecture on sonoporation and basics of CEUS.

State-of-the-art lectures were given by a wide range of internationally renowned speakers in the fields of liver, pancreas and bowel scanning, CEUS, Doppler, endosonography, elastography, and CEUS targeted therapy. The participants gave a very good evaluation of the course: Overall judgement: 8.54 on a scale from 1 (bad) to 10 (extremely good).

Some of the lectures from Bergen will be published on the web, so stay tuned on the EFSUMB website (www.efsumb.org) to enjoy.

The different guidelines and recommendations can be viewed online at the EFSUMB website. The Minimum Training requirements on CEUS, including TIPS AND TRICKS to improve your scanning technique is to be published in this Newsletter.

EFSUMB continuously works to expand our website with educational material. We are soon going to launch our new effort on the web: The educational web portal. This will be a co-site to our existing EFSUMB site and be loaded with high quality material for educational purposes.

See you at EUROSON in Copenhagen!