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Throughout the month of July, Surfing NASH embarks on a series of episodes dedicated to takeaways emerging from a busy past month at both the 2023 EASL Congress and the American Diabetes Association's 83rd Scientific Sessions. For this feature, Sven Francque (University of Antwerp) and Ian Rowe (University of Leeds) join Jörn Schattenberg and Roger Green to discuss a range of fascinating topics to emerge at the EASL Congress meeting held in Vienna.

This conversation focuses on the outcome of the nomenclature process, a three-stage Delphi process that produced new names and classification for what had previously been known as fatty liver disease and henceforth will be known as the steatotic liver disease (SLD). Sven, who was actively involved in the entire exercise, gives a concise summary of the process by which the new classifications were developed and how the new terminology will work. The rest of the conversation focuses on three issues. First, excitement that we will now have the opportunity to study patients whose disease has both metabolic and alcohol-based components. Second, the processes by which the three clinicians, Sven, Ian and Jörn are starting to share the new structure with their patients with varying degrees of success. One interesting observation emerges here from Sven: the English language terms do not translate equally into Dutch, so there is a patient advocate-led effort to create a new set of terms in Dutch. Third, Roger raises concerns about implementation planning for the new nomenclature. One concern is around the possible impact on drug or diagnostic development and the other about the kinds of communication issues covered earlier episodes. Sven, who again worked more closely on the process, states with confidence that the change will not have impact on drug or diagnostic trials. Read more about the switch to steatotic liver disease (SLD) and metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) here.

If you have questions or comments around the EASL Congress meeting, new nomenclature, discussed papers or any other topics addressed in this episode, we kindly ask that you submit reviews wherever you download the discourse. Alternatively, you can write to us directly at [email protected].

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