Thanks to the vision and hard work of the congress committee, ERS 2005 had an excellent scientific program.

Claudio F. Donner, MD

The 2005 Annual European Respiratory Society (ERS) Congress was held in Copenhagen on October 17-21. It was a highly stimulating meeting from the scientific point of view, with almost all fields of respiratory medicine represented and discussed. The scientific level of the conference was extremely high, as confirmed by the very large number of active participants: this year the ERS meeting was attended by more than 16,000 respiratory colleagues, so becoming the largest ever ERS Congress in the history of the society and the largest event of its kind in the respiratory field worldwide.

Mauro Carone, MD

Over the last 4 or 5 years, the ERS has witnessed steady growth in numbers of both clinicians and scientists attending its annual meeting. Back in 2001, the ERS Congress had caught up with and, for the first time, overlapped the ATS annual congress in terms of numbers of attendees (the September 11 disaster, which occurred just prior to the ERS congress, surprisingly had no adverse effect). Since then, the gap between the two has continued to widen, to the point that now the ERS Congress represents the largest conference in respiratory medicine in the world.

Thus, despite the “European” tag, the ERS Congress has achieved genuine worldwide status and character, with numerous participants coming from Africa; Eastern Europe; North, Central, and South America; the Middle East; Asia; and Australasia.

Thanks to the vision and hard work of the congress committee, ERS 2005 had a highly articulate scientific program composed of four major symposia, 48 symposia, 13 hot topics, 18 meet the professor seminars, and 22 evening symposia. Moderators and speakers were all top opinion leaders and experts in their particular field. To these, we must add the numerous contributions accepted from scientists from all round the world for oral presentations, for poster discussions, or as part of the thematic poster sessions.

The first day of the congress featured 22 interesting postgraduate courses. Among these, we cite three in particular: “Paediatrics: Respiratory Infections in Children,” which aimed to complete the 3-year postgraduate core curriculum covering the main issues on pediatrics; “New Treatment Strategies in Pulmonary Rehabilitation,” which showed the recent evidence about the role of new treatment strategies to assist patients admitted to pulmonary rehab programs, particularly those with severe functional impairment; and “Diet and Pulmonary Diseases: Benefits and Risks,” which sought to spread knowledge of the role played by diet in respiratory disease, which is poorly understood, and provided evidence on diet as a protective or risk factor in the development and course of respiratory disease, details of methods to assess the intake of nutrients and vitamins, and information on the underlying mechanisms.

The major symposia were all audience-packed and were in the form of interactive sessions (grand rounds) on oncology, clinics, radiology, and pediatrics. The participants showed keen interest in this interactive mode of discussing clinical cases.

The hot topic track included a symposium on the innovative technologies with which we will have to interact in the future: “Practical and Scientific Considerations in the Use of New Electronic Technologies for Ambulatory Monitoring of Respiratory Disease.” This symposium described issues of cost-benefit, quality control, data management, analysis, and future directions of electronic and Internet-based home monitoring of respiratory conditions in adults and children for a target audience of clinicians, scientists, health care professionals, developers of hardware and software, and industry partners. Another hot topic of particular interest was “New Developments in Infectious Disease,” reviewing recent issues such as new macrolides, which have emerged as important therapeutic options in different airway diseases (COPD, cystic fibrosis, and post-lung-transplant bronchiolitis obliterans) and comparing national programs in preparation for pandemic (strategies for limiting local dissemination, spatial epidemiology).

Mention should be made of the Sadoul lecture, “Towards the Physionomics of Asthma and COPD,” given this year by outstanding scientist Peter Sterk, PhD, which was truly excellent.

Since all the symposia were interesting and interactive, it is hard to single out any in particular for mention, but if we must make a choice, those that were perhaps most impressive or helpful professionally were “Outcome in Severe Pneumonia,” “Impact of the Respiratory System on Diving Fitness and Accidents,” “Physiotherapy of the Critically Ill Patients,” and especially “The ATS/ERS Statement on Pulmonary Rehabilitation.” This last symposium presented the new ATS/ERS guidelines on pulmonary rehabilitation in their final format immediately prior to publication. It focused on those aspects of the statement that reflect the changes in this discipline and the novel concepts that have emerged since the 1990s. This symposium provided fresh insight into the evolution of our concept of pulmonary rehabilitation for respiratory specialists and allied health professionals. The ATS/ERS statement is now in press; following its publication, there will be an extensive discussion during the “5th International Conference on Management and Rehabilitation of Chronic Respiratory Failure,” which will be held in Stresa, Italy, on March 22-25, 2006.

Claudio F. Donner, MD, is chief of the pulmonary division and Mauro Carone, MD is a staff physician at the Scientific Institute of Veruno, Veruno, Italy.