In a partnership between B.ACIS and the Hospital da Senhora da Oliveira, the training course had its fifth edition, resuming the advanced training program for trainees and specialists in gastroenterologists.

The fifth edition of the “Capsule Endoscopy Training Program”, a training course organized in a partnership between the Gastroenterology Service of the Hospital da Senhora da Oliveira – Guimarães, the School of Medicine of the University of Minho, and B.ACIS – Associação Ciência, Inovação e Saúde, took place between 16 and 18 of September. The goal of this advanced training course, counting on the dedicated support of a faculty of 13 specialists to guide 20 trainees, was to initiate senior gastroenterologists and gastroenterology trainees in endoscopic capsule technology.

For the course director, José Cotter, this is an “essential technique because it appears as a first-line diagnostic test for the small intestine and a complementary test for the large intestine”, which will allow the gastroenterology professional to obtain a more accurate and reliable diagnosis. This is a non-invasive procedure for the patient, who puts a recorder on his waist and swallows a capsule, which has a small camera incorporated to collect and register visual information. Subsequently, the recordings are downloaded to a reading software and analyzed, simultaneously, by the faculty and the trainees, for a session of discussion of the endoscopic finding, as explained by the course coordinator, Bruno Rosa.

Due to the sessions needing a necessarily practical approach, the coordinators managed to successfully adapt the course to the public health and safety guidelines. This was a decision praised by the trainees of the course, such as António Curado, who said that the fact of having an in-person approach “allowed to have a better knowledge about the technique, to know how to use it, to recognize the indications”. The trainee Carolina Rebelo also underlined the importance of the format of the course, as “it allows us to obtain information that digitally would not be possible for the coordinators to provide”.

Course director and coordinator, José Cotter and Bruno Rosa, respectively, make a positive assessment of this fifth edition of the “Capsule Endoscopy Training Program” course, already outlining projects for the sixth edition to be held next year.