ET 2024 awards and honours

June 18, 2024

Each year, the European Conference on Embolotherapy confers awards to physicians who stand out from the crowd. Read on to hear from ET 2024’s Best Scientific Paper Award winner and from the Magna Cum Laude Poster Award winner!

Dr. Nguyễn Ngoc Cương, winner, Best Scientific Paper Award

This Best Scientific Paper award winner is chosen each year based on votes from attendees and the Scientific Programme Committee. This year’s award went to Dr. Nguyễn Ngoc Cương of Hanoi Medical University, Vietnam, for his paper, “Interventional treatment for spontaneous chyluria.” Dr. Cương shared the background of his paper and his motivation for submitting to ET 2024 with us:

Cương: Chyluria is very rare in Western countries, but quite common in Vietnam. It is an easily recognizable phenomenon where a patient’s urine contains chyle, making it milky white. By the time I see patients with this condition, they have often had it for a very long time, seeking examination and treatment in many different hospitals, but without improvement. They are all weak and mentally very distressed. I found that the cause of our patients’ chyluria was due to an obstruction at the thoracic duct venous junction. Later, I realized that many people had asymptomatic obstructions at the thoracic duct venous junction (TVJ). Conversely, some who had TVJ obstruction exhibited symptoms such as chylothorax, chylous ascites, intermittent abdominal pain, etc., and chyluria is one of the consequences of TVJ obstruction.

I chose to submit my paper to ET because it is a major conference that brings together top experts in embolization, in particular, and interventional radiology in general. It is a meeting where I can learn a lot from experts. I wanted to share my treatment experiences from many of my cases and receive feedback so I can improve my knowledge and better serve my patients. I submitted three of my scientific reports to ET 2024, all three of which are related to lymphatic embolization and involve a fairly large number of patients. I was fortunate to be selected for an oral presentation. There are very few Southeast Asian participants at this congress, and I realized that I was the only presenter from Vietnam. This made me quite nervous at the beginning!

The other colleagues in the scientific paper session presented very interesting topics as well, I felt very honoured and surprised to be selected for the Best Scientific Paper Award. I think the number of chyluria intervention cases I reported impressed the audience; with the number of interventions reported as 43 chyluria patients over 5 years, I think there are few lymphatic interventional radiologists in the world who have more cases than I do.

This award is a great encouragement for me and has given me confidence and determination. Lymphatic interventions are challenging, but make a big difference for patients. In the near future, I will conduct a retrospective study and will submit a paper about what I have discovered to CVIR.

Best Scientific Paper Award winner Dr. Cương with ET 2024 SPC Chairperson Prof. Otto van Delden

Magna Cum Laude Poster Award winner Prof. Bilhim speaking at ET 2024.

Prof. Tiago Bilhim, Magna Cum Laude Poster Award winner

Prof. Tiago Bilhim of Hospital de Curry Cabral in Lisbon, Portugal, won this year’s Magna Cum Laude Poster Award for his team’s work, “Single-centre prospective observational study comparing 100-300 µm polyvinyl alcohol particles versus 300-500 µm trisacryl gelatin microspheres versus 400 µm hydrogel microspheres coated with polyzene-F for prostatic artery embolization to treat lower urinary tract symptoms in patient with benign prostatic hyperplasia”. Dr. Bilhim told us about his work’s implications for patients, the motivation behind his research, why he decided to submit a poster for ET 2024, and his advice for future submitters.

Bilhim: Prostatic artery embolization (PAE) to treat patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) using different types of particulate embolic agents or particles has reached the global urological guidelines. Both polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) particles and different brands of microspheres have been used since 2009. However, no prospective trial has compared the performance of these different embolic agents during PAE for BPH. Thus, the goal of this study was to try to find out if there was a specific embolic agent that was superior to the other.

I chose to submit to ET 2024 as ET is a dedicated embolization meeting, so it makes sense to have the most up-to-date data on embolotherapy published at this meeting. There is a bigger impact and visibility of your study findings if you choose focused meetings like ET. Also, winning an award at ET can allow for faster and more likely publication in CIRSE’s family of journals, CVIR and CVIR Endovascular. As for advice, I would suggest that people submit on topics that are clinically relevant relating to embolotherapy. It is essential to have the data ready on time before the abstract submission deadline in order to optimize the abstract quality.

I think what made our work stand out this year is that it is a “ready to go” manuscript – it was ready to be submitted to a scientific journal before being submitted to ET. Large data, with a large number of included patients, over a long period of time (3 years) with good follow-up data, with controls and very detailed outcome measurements before/after PAE. But most importantly, it answers a clinically relevant question – is there a specific embolic agent that is better for PAE?

These results have clinical implications for patient care! This study proves that PVA particles and different brands of microspheres perform equally well. All embolic agents used for PAE are equally safe and effective. This has clinical implications. It proves that PAE is reproducible and astonishingly consistent in terms of clinical outcomes. Whatever embolic agent you use for PAE, you are going to have the same results when you have the same team/equipment.

Also, this study shows our transition to radial access as the first line option for PAE – it’s now used in 75% of treated patients. Moreover, our unilateral PAE rate went down to under 2%. This is amazing and shows how the developments of medical devices over the last 15 years have allowed us to minimize unilateral PAE from 15% in 2009 to 7% in 2019 to 2% in 2024. Pre-shaped tip microcatheters with lower profiles, steerable microcatheters, and better microwire technology are ready now to minimize unilateral PAE rates.

Lastly, PAE made it to the guidelines with particulate embolic agents. There is a lot of hype around glue for PAE at the moment. However, we have no strong data to support glue for PAE and it should be considered experimental. This study provides background for future comparative trials between glue and the different particles. It is expected that the different particulate agents can be interchangeably used as controls for future trials comparing glue to particles.

Hoping to win an award at ET 2025? It’s not too early to start planning – click on the links below to review fantastic content from ET 2024 and share ET 2025 promo materials with your colleagues.