Welcome

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Dear Friends and Colleagues!

On behalf of the Organizing Committee of the Baltic States Live-Endoscopy Workshop I have the great privilege of welcoming you in Tallinn.

For the second time, the Estonian Society of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy has the pleasure and honour to organize the Workshop on Advanced Digestive Endoscopy under the patronage of the ESGE. We are convinced in the importance of the upcoming event, as for the first time the European Society of Gastroenterology Nurses and Associates (ESGENA) has also joined the Workshop organizers.

I would like to emphasize here that the development of the gastrointestinal endoscopy in the Baltic States received a considerable incentive namely in Tallinn in 1998, when the I Baltic States Videoworkshop was organized. For a number of physicians from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania it was the first opportunity, to participate in a top-level ESGE training and education course.

The ESGE Workshops in Latvia in 1999 and in Lithuania in 2002 were the outstanding events  in the advanced training of endoscopists. Today, the gastrointestinal endoscopy has developed into a domain in the medical science, the competence in which serves as a sign of high professionalism for gastroenterologists, surgeons and oncologists. Therefore, the Workshop organizers have set the goal, to awake interest for the modern endoscopy in as many as possible senior and junior colleagues.

The North Estonian Regional Hospital Foundation, founded in the year 2001, will be the basic Hospital in setting up the Workshop. One of the main objectives of the Hospital is to provide  the patients with the medical care according to the EU standards and to be the leader and initiator of medical innovation.

The Programme of our Workshop will include lectures on the endoscopic diagnosis and treatment of the gastrointestinal tract diseases and on sonoendoscopy.

Endoscopic procedures in the  upper and lower gastrointestinal tracts, therapeutic endoscopy of the pancreas and the biliary tree and diagnostic and therapeutic-endoscopic ultrasonography will be demonstrated  from our endoscopy and radiology suites.

I do hope that the Workshop will greatly contribute to widening the scope of knowledge both for the experienced endoscopists as well as for the young physicians and nurses in the further introduction of this complicated speciality-gastrointestinal endoscopy- into their clinical practice.

Sincerely Yours,

Mart Eisen MD

Course Director

President

Estonian Society of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy