Dysphagia and reflux -- Physiology of swallowing and antireflux mechanisms: anything new from a radiologist’s view? -- Oropharyngeal dysphagia, achalasia, and other oesophageal motility problems: clinical relevance and management -- Outcomes of different treatment opproaches for gastro-oesophageal reflux disease -- Barrett’s oesophagus: screening, surveillance, treatment: are all questions answered? -- Helicobacter pylori, NSAID, gastric cancer -- Helicobacter pylori infection: diagnosis, treatment and risks of untreated infection -- Inflammatory bowel disease section -- Genetics, Immunology and biomarkers in clinical practice: do they assist in clinical management? -- Standard therapy for ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease: the ECCO guidelines -- Biologics, novel therapeutic alternatives in inflammatory bowel disease -- Lower gastrointestinal tract (coeliac disease, infection and malignancy) -- Recent advances in coeliac disease -- Gastrointestinal manlfestations of AIDS -- Prevention and screening for colorectal cancer -- Lymphomas of the gastrointestinal tract -- Clinical challenges in liver diseases -- Do we still need liver biopsies? -- Inflammation and human cancer -- Viral hepatitis -- New insights in the immunology of viral hepatitis B and C -- New aspects of treatment of chronic hepatitis C -- Metabolic and autoimmune liver injury -- Non-alcoholic steatohepatitis: metabolic syndrome of the liver -- Autoimmune hepatitis -- Immunology of primary biliary cirrhosis and primary sclerosing cholangitis -- Alcoholic hepatitis -- Complications of cirrhosis -- Hepatorenal syndrome in cirrhosis -- Variceal bleeding -- Surveillance and prevention of hepatocellular carcinoma -- Algorithms of diagnosis and options of hepatocellular carcinoma therapy -- Surgical therapy of liver cancer: resection and transplantation.

The translation of new molecular understanding of disease into clinical practice in gastroenterology is a special challenge. The Falk Symposium No. 160, entitled ‘Pathogenesis and Clinical Practice in Gastroenterology’, held 15-16 June 2007 in Portorož, Slovenia, provided a stimulating framework to bridge discussions from bench to bedside. The proceedings of the symposium are contained in this book, and the unifying theme is the growing understanding of inflammation as a driving force in chronic disease leading to disability and malignancy. Aspects of early detection - endoscopically or via molecular markers - are covered as well as in-depth discussions of the validation of new findings in clinical practice. Whilst on a molecular basis gastroenterologists and hepatologists try to shed light on the same intracellular pathways, clinical implications such as surveillance of cancer in IBD or chronic hepatitis with cirrhosis have to be tailored to specific needs. New therapeutic agents - approved or on the horizon of early clinical studies - will dramatically change the options of patients with chronic disease such as Crohn’s disease, viral hepatitis or hepatocellular carcinoma.