FDIME activities during ECIM 2024, 5 -9 March in Istanbul

All session participants together

The booth with two congress participants

The session participants with some of the colleagues from the audience

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During the EUROPEAN CONGRESS of INTERNAL MEDICINE (ECIM) in Istanbul the Foundation for the Development of Internal Medicine in Europe (FDIME) was involved in a variety of activities.

All FDIME Board members present (Daniel Sereni, Ramon Pujol, Jan Willem Elte, Runolfur Palsson, Lorenzo Dagna, Chris Davidson) gave presentations and/or acted as chairpersons of sessions or members of a jury. During the opening ceremony of the congress Jan Willem Elte presented a tribute to Werner Bauer, past EFIM President and FDIME Board member, who passed away at the end of January 2024.
For the third time there was a combined FDIME/EFIM patient session on Wednesday March 6, mainly organized by members of the FDIME Management Team and chaired by Daniel Sereni and Ricardo Gomez Huelgas. After a short introduction about the recent activities of FDIME entitled “Internists, health communications and FDIME”and presented by Jan Willem Elte, two Turkish patients gave their view after being introduced by Akif Bayyagit, an internists from Istanbul, who also took care of the translation together with a professional translator. Mr Gokhan Eren spoke about his diabetes, his insulin pump and his diving. He also emphasized the importance of patient organizations. Mrs Saniye Busra AKSOY explained about her lupus and regretted the fact that for her disease there was no patient organization at all. After their presentations a discussion took place with the patients and their internist (Akif Bayyagit), Ramon Pujol (chair), Daniel Sereni, Ricardo Gomez Huelgas, Jan Willem Elte. There was more audience than ever and this resulted in a vivid discussion. After the session a number of photographs were taken of all persons involved, including the audience.
During the closing ceremony on Saturday March 9 the Grant Award winner of 2022 gave a short presentation of his research. Candido Munoz Munoz from Spain presented his work performed at the University Hospital in London, Great Britain: Clinical utility of the Immuno-dot blot technique for detecting non-conventional antiphospholipid antibodies to improve the diagnosis and management in criteria and non-criteria APS and SLE patients”.
After that the three (actually four) FDIME best abstract prizes as decided by a jury (Ramon Pujol, chair, Daniel Sereni, Stefan Lindgren, Katerna Delcea,and Jan Willem Elte) were reached out. Winners and subjects were:

First Prize

Dr Laura Ochando Montes
(Spain)

Improvement in activities of daily living and health status associated with the use of once-weekly semaglutide in very old patients with type 2 diabetes, obesity and heart failure.

Second Prize

Dr Kevin Chevalier
(France)

Clinical presentation, course and prognosis of patients with mixed connective tissue disease. A multicenter retrospective cohort.

Third Prize

Dr Paula Luque Linero
(Spain)

Pathologies and biomarkers for early detection of intestinal ischemia.

Third Prize

Dr Anastasia Maria Natsi
(Greece)

IL-1beta/DNA complex ELISA as a simple diagnostic tool for IL-1-mediated auto-inflammatory disease.

For the first time two third prizes were reached out because of equal ranking.

And of course there was a FDIME booth at the exhibition area.
In the booth posters were displayed with information about FDIME and its activities, including health publications and the session during ECIM 2024. Samia, the FDIME administrative assistant, gave information when asked. We are very grateful to her for her on-going support. There was ample interest for FDIME of the congress participants.