Many of you will be aware that in January of 2004 EFSUMB held a meeting of experts
in Rotterdam to formulate guidelines for the use of ultrasonic contrast agents in
the liver. These were subsequently published in the August 2004 edition of Ultraschall
in der Medizin/European Journal of Ultrasound (EJU), and have also been published
in French and Chinese. To our knowledge there have also been at least 20.000 reprints
produced in English and 5.000 in Chinese. These guidelines are freely available from
our website at www.efsumb.org.
Time has moved on, and it is now the belief of EFSUMB, and the group of experts that
developed the original guidelines, that the recommendations should be revisited and
expanded to include applications in the kidney, in reflux, in the pancreas, and in
the cerebral circulation. In order to achieve this EFSUMB have set up two further
meetings of experts (generously sponsored by manufacturers of both contrast agents
and ultrasound equipment). The first meeting was held in Bologna in September 2006
just prior to the EUROSON meeting, and some of the preliminary deliberations of the
expert group were presented at that EUROSON meeting. The second meeting was held at
the end of January 2007 in Rotterdam, immediately following the European Symposium
on Ultrasound Contrast Imaging. It is expected that the updated guidelines will be
published well before the end of 2007 in EJU and possibly in other relevant journals.
The guidelines will of course also be published on the EFSUMB web-site.
David Evans
EFSUMB President
