The successful format for communication and discussion of Clinical Cases will be continued at UEGW Barcelona 2010. These sessions, called ‘Clinics in Gastroenterology and Hepatology’, will provide a forum for the discussion of difficult clinical problems.

• Three sessions of Clinical Cases will be organised, one on each day of the meeting. Each session will include 3 cases over a 90-minute timeslot, i.e. 30 minutes per case. Sessions will be defined according to the submitted cases.
• The Clinical Case sessions are intended to be highly interactive and to provide the audience with clinically relevant discussions of multifaceted, multidisciplinary clinical challenges. Therefore, submissions will not concern cases that can be managed using standard clinical guidelines but will deal with either uncommon diseases or difficult management issues. Clinical series of multiple cases and large studies will be rejected before evaluation by a panel of referees.
• To foster the interactive format of the sessions, the cases will be discussed by a multidisciplinary panel (including physicians, surgeons, radiologists, pathologists, etc.), who will comment on the clinical presentation and management strategies. Moreover, the meeting room will be equipped with keypads, allowing the audience to vote on critical points of the presentations, such as diagnostic and treatment options, and to interact with the experts and presenters.
• The Clinical Cases should be presented by a member of the team who directly participated in the case, and should be illustrated by high-quality endoscopic, radiological and pathological images using ‘still’ or video formats.

Participants are invited to submit original Clinical Cases according to the following rules:

1. 1.    Abstracts may be submitted only electronically by using the online form from January 11, 2010 until the deadline via the conference website, at: www.uegw10.uegf.org
   Abstracts sent by mail, e-mail or fax will not be accepted. The abstracts must be submitted in English (UK spelling) and must be presented in that language.
2. 2.    The Internet submission form will automatically reject cases that do not conform to the guidelines.
3. 3.    Cases can be saved in draft status and completed before the deadline. Only abstracts with the status “Final submission” will be considered for review.
4. 4.    The submission system will generate a temporary submission number that must be used in all correspondence. If you do not receive this number immediately after your submission, your case has not been registered.
5. 5.    You are asked to provide a brief 300-word summary (2,000 characters including blank spaces, punctuation and author details) of the case and to include a list of illustrative material (endoscopic, radiological and pathological images, videos, innovative physiological or other research data).
6. 6.    You should indicate which of the authors will present the case. You are also asked to nominate a reserve presenter, in the event that the principal presenter is unable to attend the meeting at short notice. Additionally, it is mandatory to communicate presenter changes in written form.
7. 7.    Submission of a Clinical Case constitutes a formal commitment by the author to present the case in the session and at the time decided upon by the UEGF Scientific Committee. Any change in the presenting author needs to be communicated in the form of a written statement to the UEGW 2010 Scientific Committee. If the original presenting author is unable to present the case, it is that person’s responsibility to ensure that one of the co-authors takes over this role. Failure to present the Clinical Case for other than well-founded reasons will lead to rejection of cases submitted at the next UEGW Congress. The registration fees for the presenting author will not be waived. We encourage authors to register via the online registration system at the same time as they submit Clinical Cases as, much to the regret of the organisers, failure to register by the presenting author by August 16, 2010 will automatically imply that the case will not be included in the Final Programme.
8. 8.    The Scientific Committee will make a decision on the content of the Clinical Case sessions during its summer meeting, when selection of oral and poster presentations will be made following peer review and scoring of submitted abstracts. Notification of acceptance or rejection by the UEGF Scientific Programme Committee will be mailed to the submitting author at the e-mail address supplied on the abstract form by the end of July 2010. Bearing in mind the increasing security measures and firewalls, we kindly request that you ensure that e-mails can reach you by adapting your spam filter accordingly. Detailed information, guidelines and recommendations for case presentation, as well as time allotment, date, hour and venue, will be sent in due time.
9. 9.    If the Scientific Committee accepts your case, you will then be asked to submit a draft of the final presentation as a PowerPoint Presentation, including images and other illustrative material, by August 31, 2010. The presentation will be reviewed by the chairs of the session and two members of the Scientific Committee. Alterations will be proposed in order to increase the didactic content of the presentation and to adapt it to the format of the session. Adherence to the deadlines will facilitate preparation of the sessions between September and October. Please consider being available during this period for e-mail correspondence with the reviewers and organisers of the session.