UEG Podcast

Recorded on the final day of UEG Week 2026 in Barcelona, interventional endoscopist Giuseppe Vanella joins Egle Dieninyte to review the endoscopy highlights: short-course antibiotics after biliary drainage in cholangitis, percutaneous versus endoscopic stenting for malignant hilar strictures, underwater ESD, and the training and quality questions raised by expanding interventional EUS.

Host Egle welcomes back Prof. Paul Fockens, past UEG President and former Chief of Gastroenterology at Amsterdam UMC. Paul reflects on New Zealand’s slower, patient-centred care and how to step down from a top role at the right time. He also explains why team-based training is the key to teaching advanced endoscopy safely, and shares his recipe for balancing career and family.

Around half of patients with pancreatic cancer are diagnosed after the disease has already spread. Dr Pilar Acedo Nuñez from UCL joins Eglė Dieninytė to discuss screening and why we still rely on CA 19-9, what the new RAS inhibitors could mean for patients, whether molecular profiling should be routine, and what the first-in-human KRAS vaccine trial has shown in people at high risk of pancreatic cancer. Part 2 will look at treatment options.

Rome V was published ten years after Rome IV. Maura Corsetti, co-chair of the Rome V Bowel Disorders committee, joins Pradeep Mundre to discuss the relaxed IBS criteria, three new adult diagnoses, the split between research and clinical criteria, and why explaining a gut-brain diagnosis early spares patients repeat investigation.

Flares, surgery and the postpartum period. Mette Julsgaard and Pradeep Mundre on whether active disease or a JAK inhibitor is the bigger risk, starting upadacitinib at 28 weeks, acute severe colitis and when to operate, vaccinating infants exposed to biologics.