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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 posters and presentations that they find critical and/or compelling.

Ian starts this conversation by pointing to unmet needs in the primary care setting for disease identification. He refers to a related presentation of interest from Vincent Wong titled A clinical care pathway to detect advanced liver disease in patients with type 2 diabetes through automated fibrosis score calculation and electronic reminder messages: a randomised controlled trial. Ian suggests that this study proves both the value of working to identify more patients and the considerable amount of work remaining in this area. The group goes on to discuss what the implications of this study are for treatment in primary care both now and into the future of patient care. In particular, Jörn elucidates the value of FIB-4 not only as a screening tool for liver-related outcomes, but also as a predictor of cardiovascular risk and all-cause mortality. Secondly, Jörn notes that when a NASH therapy becomes available, "the granularity of picking up those patients will be higher" and physicians will be more motivated to take action provided that they have both a screening tool and available treatment to prescribe. This leads to discussion around the differences between hepatology and private medicine practices and management of a population-level disease. Ian raises the question around how frequent should testing be performed in the primary care setting for different pathways. 

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].

Stay Safe and Surf On!