Baveno V 20th Anniversary International Consensus Workshop and Postgraduate Course: current consensus and future directions in the diagnosis and treatment of portal hypertension

Baveno V is a sequel of the Baveno I-IV Workshops, which were held in 1990, 1995, 2000 and 2005. All the previous Workshops were successful, as proven by more than 500 citations of the Workshop reports in the medical literature.


After Baveno IV, important advances have been made in understanding the pathophysiology of portal hypertension, as well as in developing new treatments and new strategies for the management of variceal bleeding. For these reasons, we thought that the time had come to organize a fifth Baveno Workshop.


As for the previous editions, the aim of the Baveno V Workshop is twofold: first, to review and put into perspective the changes in diagnostic and therapeutic strategies that have occurred in the past 5 years in the field of portal hypertension. Second, to continue the effort - which had begun in Baveno I twenty years ago - of producing updated definitions and guidelines aimed at improving the quality of our future studies, and ultimately of patient management.


The Workshop will begin with an introduction which will summarize the work previously done in the Baveno Workshops I to IV, and a lecture which will examine the application of the Baveno recommendations in trials and clinical practice.


The structure of the Workshop is similar to that of the previous ones - there will be 5 sessions: four will deal with key topics (pre-primary and primary prophylaxis, treatment of the acute bleeding episode, secondary prophylaxis and vascular diseases of the liver); the other will be devoted to the revision of the undecided or controversial issues of Baveno I-IV concerning the definition of key events, also in light of the feed-back that we have received about their application in the field.


As usual, in each session there will be ample space for discussion from the Panels and the Audience. This time, we have introduced a voting system which will allow to assess the opinion of the attendees on the new consensus statements that will be proposed by the experts.


Between sessions, there will be 6 lectures, held by world experts. Each of them will deal with important topics such as the appropriate choice of end points for trials, the potential use of prognostic variables to direct management in the acute setting, the stages classification of cirrhosis, the reappraisal of coagulopathy in chronic liver disease , anticoagulant treatment in cirrhosis with portal vein thrombosis, and the relationship between variceal bleeding, infections and the hepatorenal syndrome.


A new feature of the workshop will be the inclusion of two symposia, at the beginning and the end, devoted to examine the potential of new diagnostic tools and of new drugs for the management of portal hypertension.


Another new feature is the `Report from Pediatrics`, which is aimed at examining the similarities and differences between adult and pediatric portal hypertension.