Dear colleagues and friends,

It is an honor to present you the program for our sixth annual gastrointestinal endoscopy course Amsterdam Live Endoscopy. As you can see we have again been able to gather top endoscopists from all over the world to come to Amsterdam. In our 2-day course they will share and show their endoscopic expertise as well as discuss indications and contraindications for endoscopic procedures. The course focuses on new developments but also takes pride in showing state-of-the-art techniques of relatively common procedures. Even with 10 or more years experience it continues to be important to benchmark our techniques. Although it sometimes seems that not much has changed in a decade, many things have actually changed a lot. We can now characterize small polyps effectively and take them off by cold snaring. We can now remove lateral spreading tumors by submucosal injection plus either piecemeal or ESD techniques. We are now able to perform an endoscopic myotomy comparable to a surgical Heller’s procedure and we now treat early esophageal and gastric cancer routinely with an endoscope. All these developments make high quality postgraduate training in GI endoscopy a must for each practicing physician.

Amsterdam Live Endoscopy offers you two full days with over 35 endoscopic procedures televised in High Definition from AMC to the Okura hotel. It also offers you an option to listen to state-of-the-art lectures as well as to discuss subjects in small interactive breakout sessions with the best endoscopists of the world.

We look forward seeing you in Amsterdam in December on Monday 17 and Tuesday 18, 2012.

Paul Fockens, chairman