Experts gather at Olbert Workshop

A highlight of the German speaking interventional radiolgy calendar is the Friedrich Olbert interventional workshop, which took place this year between the 11th and 14th of January in Munich. Friedrich Olbert, for those who do not already know of him and his reputation, works in the surgery department of the Wien Lainz. He has established a reputation as one of Europe's leading interventional radiologists and was president and founder of the Cardiovascular and Interventional Radiological Society of Europe (CIRSE) in 1985.

This meeting has been going under its present name since 1994, although it grew from a smaller meeting started in 1981. This year's congress president was Johannes Lammer from Vienna, supported by a scientific committee that included significant members of the German speaking interventional radiology community such as Dierk Vorwerk from Ingolstadt and Hermann Berger from the Klinikum rechts der Isar Muenchen.

As usual the exhibition was a mixture of live cases and lectures on clinical practice and new technologies. We focused on the sessions on Friday and Saturday but, according to conversations we had had with attendees, there had been plenty of interest on earlier days including a session on cutting balloons and CryoPlasty, and a series of interesting live cases.

The first session we attended was the honorary lecture on the inferior vena cava (IVC) filter that looked at current developments with this product. The lecture was presented by Rolf Guenther of Aachen. He examined the different devices on the market including permanent and temporary devices. He said he believed that there is a bright future for retrievable filters, and presented many data to support this. He contended that trial data support the use of retrievable filters for up to a year and predicted that in the future this could commonly stretch to 1.5 years. He also believed that repositioning IVC filters was both a viable and advisable technique.

In the late afternoon, Ulrich Hoffmann of Munich gave a presentation on critical ischaemia and the definition and standards of non-invasive diagnosis. He was followed by HJ Wagner on percutaneous transluminal angioplasty (PTA) techniques. He said he believed that coronary balloons and guidewires were completely unavailable for this area. He also supported the use of coronary balloons for long lesions.

Thomas Rand of Vienna then spoke about the range of stents that could be used in infrapopliteal arteries. He showed data that supported the use of passive coated stents like the Carbostent from Sorin. He became enthusiastic when he showed the results, which demonstrated successful use of drug-eluting stents (DES): 96% technical success and 90% clinical success. He felt that DES could become the dominant stent for this pathology, with the sirolominus-eluting stent being a slightly better option in this area, and looked forward to longer-term clinical trials.