The World Symposium on Pulmonary Hypertension (PH) is the biggest disease-specific scientific meeting held in every five years. The 7th symposium held in Barcelona welcomed more than 1600 physicians, researchers, nurses, representatives of the pharmaceutical companies and patient representatives during the last weekend of June.
The preparation for this event started well before when 124 task force members in 15 groups were working on the proceedings.
ERN-Lung was very well represented in the meeting: there was no single European member of the Organizing Committee and the Task Force on patient perspective who do not have ERN-Lung affiliation!
Following the opening ceremony, the presentation of the Patient Perspective Task Force set the scene and reminded the participants of the principle โNothing about us without usโ.
The 3-day conference covered many aspects of the disease including classification, diagnosis, treatment goals and algorithm, risk stratification and genetics. Special attention was paid to transplantation, disease management in special conditions (eg. pregnancy, climate change) and to various groups of patients, eg. pediatric population, PH with left heart and chronic lung diseases and chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH).
The Symposium was a great success and a clear message how strongly the stakeholders are committed. We look forward to the 8th World Symposium and we do hope that we will witness even more advances!
