The Souvenir Session- Breaking News and highlights from the Scientific Programme

Fri, 1 Mar 2013

The fifth and final day of the 28th Annual EAU Congress is dedicated to a special Plenary Session, which includes an exhaustive souvenir session, as well as late breaking news presentations from key figures in urology. Chairman of the EAU Scientific Congress Committee, Prof. Arnulf Stenzl is chairing this plenary session, and here he explains the considerations behind these sessions, and why urologists will be interested to hear from these speakers.

“At over 4,000, this year marks the biggest number of abstracts to be submitted to the Annual Congress in its history,” Prof. Stenzl clarifies. “For many urologists, it is not always possible to attend every session that they are interested in. In recent years we’ve held a Souvenir Session in order to offer them an overview of highlights from the sessions they might have missed.”

“Members of the Scientific Committee of the EAU which are selected among the best European urologists will go through the presented abstracts in their respective field of interest and will then make a selection focusing on those papers with the best take-home messages.” All major topics from the previous days will be addressed by their respective experts, from various urological cancers to andrology and stone disease.

Breaking News

In addition to this opportunity for catch-up, the fourth Plenary Session gives a slot to late-breaking news. Prof. Stenzl: “We are very careful in selecting these contributions which are submitted after the deadline passes. We have prepared a selection of several interesting presentations after a careful reviewing of the applications.”

Many of the late-breaking news presentations deal with the topic of prostate cancer. Prof. Manfred Wirth will be presenting the first results of the EAU Research Foundation’s Zometa European Study (ZEUS), exploring whether Zometa can prevent bone metastasis in high-risk prostate cancer patients. Prof. Ying-Hao Sun will present a report on the rise of prostate cancer in China. Stenzl: “It should be interesting for delegates to see how eastern Asia, and specifically China is dealing with the problem of prostate cancer. Up to recently, this was not considered to be a major problem in this area of the world.”

Other selected topics during the fourth Plenary Session include debates on focal therapy, PSA screening, and high-risk PCa: Surgery vs. radiation vs. systemic therapy. “This is a very interesting but strongly debated subject which will be presented and discussed in a round-table including world experts on this field.”