ESPGHAN Podcast

Dr. Alex Knisely is talking to, or with, or even maybe mostly listening to Prof. Dr. Michael Trauner, of Vienna – Professor Trauner has a lot to say on today’s topic, on which he recently provided the keynote address at the May, 2023, annual meeting of ESPGHAN. The topic is bile acids: They’re paracrine and endocrine hormones, not just lipid solubilisers ; modified versions offer promise in modula...

We are talking to Dr. Elena Cernat, of Leeds out of Romania, and the topic is oven-fresh : What was the 2023 annual meeting of ESPGHAN like? Elena last year gave us her opinions on interesting and very likely significant presentations at the previous annual meeting, and the Education Committee earlier this month again sent her out onto the convention floor to reconnoitre for more of the same. She...

Dr. Alex Knisely is talking today to Dr. Ana Močić-Pavić, of Zagreb, whose great love is hollow-viscus work – inflammatory bowel disease, its demographics and its manifestations, particularly in Croatia, where she has been prominent among the teams that validated in Croatian children the utility of Impact-III scoring, that set up the first IBD registry in Croatia, and – this was a first not jus...

Dr Alex Knisely is talking to Dr. Andreas Jenke — Journal Club again ! Two articles of particular interest and significance from the April, 2023, edition of JPGN are discussed. One examines how pre-term infants fare nutritionally during several years' follow-up and identifies a surprise risk factor for poor outcome : Prolonged ventilation (10 days or more). The other, which on behalf of the Histop...

Dr. Alex Knisely is talking today to Dr. Mike Thomson of Sheffield (England), a gastroenterologist whose true love is endoscopy – interventional endoscopy. Mike has contributed substantially to systematising approaches to upper endoscopy in the setting of acute haemorrhage in children : As always, the indications differ between children and adults. Not only that, too few persons, whether paediatri...

We are talking to Dr. Andreas Jenke — Journal Club again! Two articles of particular interest and significance from the March, 2023, number of JPGN are discussed. One examines plasma constituents in children with untreated eosinophilic oesophagitis, mapping a wide range of small molecules. The “metabolomic profile” obtained is abnormal, but will any abnormalities resolve with successful treatment?...

It’s the February JPGN Journal Club podcast, with Dr Andreas Jenke as docent and Dr Alex Knisely as interviewer. The two articles selected for discussion deal with, first, functional gastrointestinal disease as encountered in routine paediatric visits among infant and toddler populations in three regions of Italy – the conclusions will surprise you – and, second, with what patients, parents, and c...

We are talking to Dr. Hania Szajewska of Warsaw, who as a newly fledged paediatric hepatogastroenterologist one day in Houston at a joint ESPGHAN / NASPGHAN meeting a few years back volunteered to collaborate in an international research investigation of -biotics (pro-, pre-, sym-, and post- are the flavours that she defines for us) and from then on has made the evidence-based study of these aids...

We are talking to Prof. Valerie McLin of Geneva, Switzerland, where at the Hôpitaux universitaires de Genève she heads the Division of Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition, about the clinically Protean — and thus as fascinating as they are challenging — disorders called portosystemic vascular shunts. Intrahepatic or extrahepatic, they all should be closed. But how are they to be r...

Dr. Alex Knisely is talking to Prof. Andreas Jenke — based in Kassel, Germany; but that’s less important today than is his position on the ESPGHAN Education Committee. Enough touchy-feely in these podcasts it’s Journal Club today, where two articles of particular interest and significance from the January, 2023, number of JPGN are discussed.  Neither article, however, lays down the law: THIS IS WH...

Dr. Alex Knisely is talking to Dr. Olzhas Abdrakhmanov of the Scientific Centre of Pediatrics and Children’s Surgery, Almaty, Kazakhstan, until recently the nation’s capital (and still her premier city), about the hurdles and satisfactions of working as a paediatrician passionate about hepatogastroenterology who lacks the benefits of formal training in that discipline.  His motto as he progressed...

We are talking to Dr. Andreia Nita of Bucharest, Romania, and Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, London, about her personal route into paediatric gastroenterology and about the opportunities that ESPGHAN, and particularly “Young ESPGHAN”, in which she is active — cut-off upper age forty, but for the right woman or man they’ll stretch a point — make available not only to trainees but also t...

Dr. Alex Knisely is talking to Dr. Patrick Bontems of Hôpital Universitaire des Enfants Reine Fabiiola in Brussels / Brüssel / Bruxelles, Belgium, about Helicobacter pylori infection — how does one recognise it, diagnose it, treat it, and demonstrate success in treating it? What does one do with asymptomatic close family or social contacts? What about screening the asymptomatic in high-incidence p...

Dr. Alex Knisely is talking to Dr. Miguel Sáenz de Pipaón of Hospital Universitario La Paz and the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, a Madrileño with Basque-country heritage, about the challenges of ensuring growth in prematurely born infants —what constitutes proper nutrition, how to supply that nutrition, how to determine with follow-up studies over both the short and the long term if the nutritio...

Dr. Jutta Köglmeier of Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children, in London, talks to us about blended diets for tube feedings and how they can contribute to patient care.  Do they permit adequate nutrition? Do they let parents and other caregivers bond more closely, as members of a family, with the children who are thus fed? Nutrition for the spirit as well as for the body is the principal t...

We are talking to Dr. Ulrich Baumann of Hannover, Germany, about Prof Baumann's experiences both as a junior researcher in Birmingham, UK, investigating the population of cells from which liver regeneration occurs and as a senior clinical caregiver in Hannover using a newly developed inhibitor of enteric bile-salt uptake to treat — with success — a number of the complications that follow liver tra...

Dr. Alex Knisely is talking to Dr. Jake Mann of the UK, who has one foot in Birmingham and the other in Cambridge, about how computational biology and paediatric hepatology intersect in Dr Mann's work, which addresses animal-model assay validation, genetic susceptibilities to fatty liver disease, and population-wide assessment of incidence of various disorders.  For prospective holiday-makers, Jak...

We are talking to Dr. Marco Gasparetto of Padua, Italy, and of Cambridge and East London, UK, about the prospects for genetically individualised treatment of paediatric inflammatory bowel disease.  Brace yourselves for computational biology in pre-clinical validation studies.  Also on the agenda, this question:  for a devoted musician, did the move from Padua to Britain mean trading down? Featurin...

Dr. Alex Knisely is talking to Dr. Lorenzo D ´Antiga of Bergamo about under-appreciated biliary disease after liver transplantation, the role of molecular studies in neonatal liver disease, and the long-ago shared times at King’s College Hospital before either man went grey : Liver disease and mis-spent youth . Featuring: Dr. Lorenzo D´Antiga ESPGHAN Podcast Host: Dr. Alex Knisely Production Manag...

Dr. Alex Knisely is talking to Dr. Susan Hill of London about small-bowel disease that requires long-term parenteral alimentation. Short-bowel problems and the need for teamwork among care-givers are the themes principally addressed. Featuring: Dr. Susan Hill ESPGHAN Podcast Host: Dr. Alex Knisely Production Management: Selma Ertl Recording: Manuel Schuster

Dr. Alex Knisely is talking to Dr. Andrew Barclay of Glasgow about gastrointestinal dystonia, a disorder or class of disorders now coming into focus for those who attend neurodevastated children. How is gastrointestinal dystonia to be recognised? Does administration of cannabinoids help?

We are talking to Dr. Marc Benninga of Amsterdam about the complex challenges that children with abnormal stooling, in particular faecal retention and “overflow” leakage, present to physicians, other care-givers, and families. 

Elena Cernat, of Leeds, is back from Copenhagen, where she attended the 2022 annual meeting of ESPGHAN.  She’s selected six presentations that intrigued her, presentations that to her represent advances on the clinical and on the basic-science fronts.  She’ll now tell us what we should know about and why.   

Today we’re privileged to hear Aglaia Zellos, of Athens, share her thoughts on the remarkably complex subject of acute liver failure in paediatric patients. We can only skim the surface of a topic worth an entire ESPGHAN conference and, so far, two summary papers — we may not address your favourite aspect — but we hope, and trust, that it will be interesting!

We are talking to Dr Lissy de Ridder of Rotterdam about button batteries — we need them, but how do we reduce the threat that they pose to children and how do we best treat the ingestions that we haven’t been able to prevent? Featuring: Guest: Dr. Lissy de Ridder ESPGHAN Podcast Host: Dr. Alex Knisely Production Management: Selma Ertl Recording: Manuel Schuster