EURECA-m CME Course in Iasi

Last September 5th and 6th, 2014, Prof. Adrian Covic organized, as former EURECA-m Board Member, the 3rd EURECA-m CME Course of the year in Iasi, Romania.
Iasi is a very nice city and the most important political, economic and cultural centre of the province of Moldavia as well as one of the oldest cities in Romania.
The CME was successful and innovative: the topic was “Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors in CKD: problems and solutions”.

The CME discussed the cardiovascular risk factors in chronic kidney disease (CKD) in all aspects with 14 talks by experts in the field grouped into 4 sessions and various lectures as below:

Measuring renal function and integrating cardiovascular risk factors in CKD: a reappraisal
Chairs: Alberto Ortiz, Patrick Rossignol

Pulmonary congestion in CKD: an integrator of LV disorders and volume overload
Carmine Zoccali (Reggio Calabria, Italy)

New methods to evaluate cardiac and fluid status in dialysis
Adrian Covic (Iasi, Romania)

Cardiac evaluation of transplant candidates – what test for what person?
Gérard Michel London (Paris, France)

Bioimpedance and lung comments guided management in dialysis patients. Preliminary results of the BUST trial
Dimitrie Siriopol, Mihai Onofriescu (Iasi, Romania)

Inflammation and nutrition in CKD, always at center stage
Chairs: Carmine Zoccali, Ziad Massy

Inflammasome and cardio-renal risk in CKD
Alberto Ortiz (Madrid, Spain)

Aldosterone antagonism – better than ACEI?
Patrick Rossignol (Nancy, France)

Stroke risk: a crucial, over looked problem in CKD
Adrian Covic (Iasi, Romania)

Clinical epidemiology of hypertension and hypertension related risk in CKD
Chairs: Gerard Michel London, Andrzej Wiecek

Nutrition and cardiovascular disease in CKD: any room for intervention?
Denis Fouque (Lyon, France)

Visit to visit variability in CKD
Francesca Mallamaci (Reggio Calabria, Italy)

Novel pharmacological treatments of hypertension
Andrzej Wiecek (Katowice, Poland)

Update on renal ablation for hypertension
Mehmet Kanbay (Istanbul, Turkey)

CKD-MBD in cardiovascular and renal medicine: two steps forward and one back?
Chairs: Adrian Covic, David Goldsmith

Re-appraisal about the role of PTH in Cardiovascular Disease and in CKD.
Gérard Michel London (Paris, France)

Pros and cons debate: Phosphate as a cardiovascular risk factor: is the evidence solid enough? (Pros)
Ziad Massy (Paris, France)

Any evidence linking CKD-MBD to hard outcomes? (Cons)
David Goldsmith (London, UK)

The discussion about cardio-renal link is very complex: there is a bi-directionality link, loss of kidney function may trigger cardiovascular disease and cardiovascular diseases may also engender kidney damage. The experts also discussed the importance of inflammation and nutrition is CKD patients as well as about the volume control by bio-impedence and thorax ultrasound in CKD on outcome. They also provided about the importance of visit to visit blood pressure variability on long-term outcome in CKD patients and also discussed novel pharmacological and other treatment (renal denervation) modalities of hypertension. Lastly, they also provided an update on vascular calcification (including phosphate, FGF-23, klotho).