Focus on REPRODUCTION European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology // MAY 2010 // Crisis? What crisis? ESHRE’sESHRE’s rolerole inin Europe’sEurope’s politicspolitics ofof populationpopulation ESHRE news Papers which changed the world of ART Meet ESHRE’s next chairman EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE Focus on Chairman Luca Gianaroli (IT) Chairman Elect Anna Veiga (ES) REPRODUCTION Members Ursula Eichenlaub-Ritter (DE) Jean-François Guerin (FR) Chairman’s introduction Timur Gürgan (TR) Antonis Makrigiannakis (GR) Carlos Plancha (PT) In my introduction to the January issue of Focus on Françoise Shenfield (GB) Reproduction I stated that 2010 was likely to be a Miodrag Stojkovic (RS) hectic year for ESHRE. Four months later, I can confirm Anne-Maria Suikkari (FI) Etienne Van den Abbeel (BE) that this is proving particularly true. Heidi Van Ranst (BE) Traditionally, ESHRE has always given its first Veljko Vlaisavljevic (SL) priority to education, but this year we have made even Ex-officio members extra efforts in this direction. The budget for Joep Geraedts (Past Chairman) Søren Ziebe (SIG Sub- educational activities has been increased by more than committee) 30% over the previous year and 27 Campus symposia and workshops have joined the annual meeting and FOCUS ON REPRODUCTION precongress courses to enrich the ESHRE calendar. EDITORIAL COMMITTEE So far, we have had extremely positive feed-back from all the activities that Paul Devroey Bruno Van den Eede have already taken place this year. Our Campus meeting on the ‘Prevention Hans Evers and treatment of infertility in modern society’, held in Istanbul in February Joep Geraedts and reported in detail on page 28, formally inaugurated the public activities of Luca Gianaroli the Task Force Reproduction and Society, and created much interest. Hanna Hanssen Anna Veiga Another important event was the Campus consensus meeting on poor Søren Ziebe ovarian response held in Bologna in March. This was the first ever activity to Simon Brown (Editor) be organised through a collaboration of all ESHRE’s SIGs. The meeting Focus on Reproduction culminated with the development of common definition of poor ovarian is published by response, an issue that has so far has been the subject of much debate in the The European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology scientific community. Meerstraat 60 There is also encouraging news to report from the embryology certification Grimbergen, Belgium committee, which will shortly introduce a process of certification renewal [email protected] www.eshre.eu through a scoring system similar to the CME scheme already in place in many European countries. All rights reserved. The opinions expressed in this As far as international relationships are concerned, a letter of intent has magazine are those of the been recently signed by ESHRE and the Chinese Society for Reproductive authors and/or persons interviewed Medicine to promote grants and exchanges between researchers from Europe and do not necessarily reflect the views of ESHRE. and China. We are hopeful that this collaboration will lead to significant results in the future. MAY 2010 The organisation of the annual meeting in Rome is now progressing in the Cover picture: best possible way, and ESHRE 2010 will be another outstanding assembly of Getty Images/Hulton Archive clinicians, scientists and paramedics from all over the world. So I look forward to seeing you all in Rome! Luca Gianaroli ESHRE Chairman 2009-11 CONTENTS NEWS FEATURES 4 Scientific programme Rome 28 Europe’s demographic crisis 8 Honorary members 2010 Simon Brown on ESHRE’s role in Europe’s politics of population 9 This year’s AGM agenda 32 Papers which changed the world 10 Rome to celebrate 20 years of PGD of assisted reproduction 13 From the Paramedical Group Hans Evers with a commentary on 14 Fertility Europe some of the landmark papers 15 From the Special Interest Groups in the history of ART 36 Meet Anna Veiga 20 Sperm banking Campus report ESHRE’s Chairman Elect 24 Consensus in poor ovarian response talks about her career and 26 From the Task Forces ambitions for the Society Focus on Reproduction May 2010 3 ANNUAL MEETING 2010 Abstracts go through the roof Submissions up by an unprecedented 33% The final programme for our annual meting in Rome is All abstracts were submitted to our standard review now confirmed, and this year the International Scientific procedure, which comprises a screening and a scoring Committee (ISC) has been faced with an unprecedented process. The aim of the screening is: increase in the number of abstracts submitted. The to ensure that abstracts are generally designated to the committee has received a remarkable 33% more abstracts correct topic category this year than last, a rise from 1154 in 2009 to 1539 in to eliminate all abstracts of obviously poor quality 2010. It is also clear that there is a wealth of new to eliminate abstracts that deal with topics or subject developments now scheduled for the free communications, matters unrelated to the meeting either as oral or poster presentations. A total of 138 abstracts were rejected following the The submitted abstracts were arranged in the following screening process. In addition, there were five withdrawals. categories before review: This means that 1396 abstracts underwent the complete review procedure. Of these, there were: Category Total 359 abstracts submitted for poster presentation only Andrology 208 1037 abstracts submitted for oral/poster presentation Cross-border reproductive care 17 And from this latter total no more than 239 have now been Demography, epidemiology, registries, selected for oral presentation and 590 for poster. This and health economy 54 selection was done solely on the basis of the scores from Early pregnancy 71 three reviewers scoring blinded abstracts. The 239 free Embryology (embryo selection) 184 communications have now been divided into 45 sessions, Endometriosis, endometrium, implantation 144 which each contains between four and seven oral Ethics and law 21 presentations. Fertility preservation 105 Others 202 Poster presentations Paramedical (nursing, laboratory) 30 With such a substantial increase in the number of abstracts Psychology and counselling 47 submitted, the ISC agreed to admit a higher percentage of Reproductive endocrinology 217 poster presentations than last year, with 590 authors now Reproductive genetics 68 invited to present their posters electronically. Furthermore, Reproductive surgery 35 each presenter this year will be offered the additonal Safety & Quality 112 opportunity of a paper poster. These traditional posters will Stem cells 24 be presented in the ‘Poster Village’, according to subject, as Grand total 1539 was done last year. The number of posters in each category 4 Focus on Reproduction May 2010 Human Reproduction Topic (total posters) Poster discussion Poster Village keynote lecture, in honour of the best paper from our main Andrology (91) Tuesday Wednesday journal. The first presenter, Cross-border reproductive care (9) Monday Gayle Jones, has been Demography, epidemiology, registries and health economy (17) Monday selected on the basis of the Early pregnancy (23) Tuesday paper ‘Novel strategy with Embryology (103) Tuesday potential to identify Endometriosis, endometrium, implantation (64) Monday Tuesday developmentally competent Ethics and Law (4) Monday IVF blastocysts’, which was Fertility preservation (49) Wednesday Monday published in 2008. Gayle will Paramedical (6) Tuesday begin her presentation with Psychology & counselling (14) Tuesday the published work and then Reproductive endocrinology (97) Monday go on to deal with more Reproductive genetics (27) Monday recent developments. The Reproductive surgery (11) Wednesday second keynote lecture is by Safety & quality (63) Tuesday Wybo Dondorp, who will Stem cells (12) Wednesday discuss the risks and responsibilities associated as well as the days on which they will be presented in the with innovative reproductive technologies. Poster Village are indicated in the box above. In addition, Monday morning will also feature a PGD/PGS session each day of the meeting will feature a more formal poster during which the latest annual data from the PGD discussion, also as indicated in the table above. The time Consortium will be presented as well as the first results allocated to each presenting author will be restricted to from the PGS pilot study staged by ESHRE’s Task Force on two minutes only and thereafter three minutes will be PGS. available for discussion. In recent years our debate sessions have been well Continued over page Geographical distribution As ever, abstracts were received from all over the world. This year, no fewer than 65 countries (last year 60) will be represented. The ten most prolific countries are shown below: Total Selected Selected abstracts for oral for poster Spain 157 19 65 Italy 128 10 48 United Kingdom 114 29 39 USA 86 18 44 Netherlands 81 23 35 Japan 76 8 39 France 73 16 34 China 63 7 19 Where from? Selected oral presentations 2010. South Korea 60 3 22 Brazil 60 9 19 It is interesting to note that Belgium, which is not on this list, submitted 40 abstracts, of which 14 were selected for oral and 19 for poster presentation. As always, the main scientific meeting begins on the Monday morning (28th June). Before that, however, no fewer than 12 precongress courses will be held on the Sunday. The topics vary from ‘Patient-centred fertility care’, hosted by Fertility Europe, to ‘Fertility preservation in cancer’, organised