Priority topics

This page contains deadlines and the priority topics for the ERS International Congress 2023, taking place in Milan, Italy from 9–13 September.

Check the session types web page for details on what is included in the congress programme.

Congress deadlines 2023

Milan 2023 – Hot topics submission

Submissions | 19 December, 2022 – 20 March, 2023

Priority topics for 2023

The ERS International Congress 2023 theme is "Pollution, climate change and sustainable developments"​. The Congress programme will extensively cover the latest advances in research and clinical practice by linking the theme above with following topics and professional specialities:

Respiratory clinical care and physiology

Areas covered will include:

  • Breathlessness (diagnosis and management).
  • Precision rehabilitation: personalised indications, programmes, outcomes.
  • Asthma diagnosis (adults and children).
  • An aging lung: respiratory disease in elderly.
  • Digital solutions: a new way of working.

Respiratory intensive care

Areas covered will include:

  • Weaning from mechanical ventilation: lessons from WEAN-SAFE.
  • Lung ultrasound in acute respiratory care.
  • Advanced care planning in long-term mechanical ventilation.
  • Setting up chronic ventilation: what are the needs for different diseases?

Basic and translational sciences

Areas covered will include:

  • Mechanisms responsible for progression of pulmonary diseases.
  • Cross-talk: inter-organ and cell-to-cell communication strategies in lung health and disease.
  • Innovative strategies for lung repair including cell and extracellular-vesicle based therapy in lung disease.
  • Exacerbations, imbalanced immunity and cellular plasticity in lung disease.
  • Disrupted lung homeostasis, from fibrosis to cancer.

Sleep disordered breathing

Areas covered will include:

  • New diagnostic tools for sleep disordered breathing.
  • Sleep apnea and comorbit sleep disorders.
  • Obesity and the lung: from wakefulness to sleep.
  • Where we stand with non-CPAP therapies: from bench to bedside.
  • Sleep disorders to obstructive and restrictive respiratory diseases.

Airway diseases, asthma, COPD and chronic cough

Areas covered will include:

  • Inflammation in airways diseases: which compartment matters; nasal, large, small airways or blood?
  • New drugs in asthma, COPD and chronic cough.
  • New insights into small airways disease: pathology, physiology, pharmaceutics and patient outcomes.
  • Techniques to detect airway inflammation: time for an update.
  • Treatable traits in COPD.

Epidemiology and environment

Areas covered will include:

  • Determinants (including airborne pollutants) of lung health in non-smoking adults.
  • Air pollution, emission sources, desert dust storms and climate change: impact on lung health.
  • Towards chronic respiratory disease prevention through occupational and environmental exposure management.
  • What have we learned from the longitudinal general population surveys in respiratory epidemiology over the last fifty years?
  • What pandemics should have taught us: preventing disease and disability from occupational respiratory infections?

Paediatrics

Areas covered will include:

  • Childhood onset lung disease into adulthood.
  • Determinants of lung function trajectories from infancy to adulthood.
  • Diagnostic tools for PCD disease: where are we at?
  • Severe asthma: what is a good response to biologics?
  • Genetic testing in paediatric respiratory diseases.

Thoracic surgery and transplantation

Areas covered will include:

  • Surgical or medical strategy for locally-advanced, stage IIIA/B-N2 non-small cell lung cancer: the key role of the multidisciplinary team in the decision-making process.
  • Feasibility and surgical outcomes of video-assisted thoracoscopic pulmonary resection in patients with advanced-stage lung cancer after neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy.
  • Lung fungal infection and co-infection in immunocompetent and immunosuppressed patients (from COVID 19 to bone marrow or lung transplant recipients).
  • Thoracoscopic versus open lobectomy after induction therapy for non-small cell lung cancer: surgical outcomes.
  • Electromagnetic navigation transthoracic nodule localization for minimally invasive thoracic surgery.

Allied respiratory professionals

Areas covered will include:

  • Emerging technologies and AI in physiological assessment.
  • Short functional testing in chronic lung disease.
  • Long-term complications of COVID-19: assessment and pulmonary rehabilitation.
  • Patient assessment and implementation of homebased pulmonary rehabilitation.
  • Empowering health care workers to use digital technology.

Respiratory infections

Areas covered will include:

  • Emerging infectious diseases.
  • Future of tuberculosis drugs and regimens.
  • Future of tuberculosis drugs and regimens
  • How to manage chronic nontuberculous mycobacteria
  • Biomarkers in respiratory infection. What is the present and what can we aim in the future?
  • How to deal with the adverse events of anti-tuberculosis drugs?

Thoracic oncology

Areas covered will include:

  • Optimal lung cancer management of early stage/locally advanced NSCLC (incl. diagnostic algorithms to optimise lung cancer resection / radiotherapy and cure).
  • CT screening and lung nodules.
  • Stratification of malignant pleural effusion pathway: diagnostic and straight to biopsy (biomarkers, imaging).
  • Early stage mesothelioma: Mars2 and some other data? Late-stage treatments for early stage.
  • Endoscopy, including NMR, robotic and navigation bronchoscopy.

Interstitial lung diseases

Areas covered will include:

  • The future of ILD.
  • Management of fibrosing non-IPF ILDs.
  • Combining immunosuppressive drugs and antifibrotics in CTD-ILD: practical aspects.
  • CTD-ILD: from screening to disease monitoring and treatment.
  • Diagnosing and treating rare lung diseases.

Pulmonary vascular diseases

Areas covered will include:

  • Difficult treatment decisions in (intermediate) high risk and in critical situations.
  • Pulmonary hypertension in lung and heart disease.
  • Optimal follow-up of patients with pulmonary embolism.
  • The origin of pulmonary hypertension (different concepts of disease).
  • Radiology of pulmonary vascular diseases.

Clinical techniques, imaging and endoscopy

Areas covered will include:

  • Pheripheral lung nodule; bronchoscopic (navigational) techniques, radiology and surgical techniques.
  • Endoscopy, including NMR, robotic and navigation bronchoscopy.
  • Interventional pulmonology course/skills workshop.
  • CT screening and lung nodules.
  • Mediastinal staging: the what and the how (incl. imaging techniques, novel sampling techniques).

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