From Oct. 27 to 30, the 7th edition of Baveno Consensus, the authoritative guidelines for portal hypertension in the world, was released at an online conference, and the full text was published in Journal of Hepatology (IF: 25). Associate Professor Luo Xuefeng from the Department of Gastroenterology was invited to participate in the compilation of these guidelines, which is also the first time for mainland Chinese scholars to be invited.

Baveno Consensus represents the most influential guidelines for diagnosis and treatment of portal hypertension in the world, and has been officially endorsed by major international liver disease societies such as European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL), American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD) and Asian Pacific Association for the Study of the Liver (APASL), thus taking an authoritative position amongst ordinary societies. With the first edition being released in 1990, the International Consensus is updated every five years. The 7th edition was delayed for one year due to the outbreak of COVID-19. Portal Hypertension VII, published by Springer as a supporting book of the Baveno Consensus, will also be released recently.

Baveno Consensus participants are experts who have made important contributions in this field, such as Guadalupe Garcia-Tsao (former chairman of AASLD, who formulated AASLD’s portal hypertension guidelines), Juan Carlos Garcia-Pagàn and JonelTrebicka (who formulated EASL’s portal hypertension guidelines), Shiv K. Sarin (current chairman of APASL), and Dhiraj Tripathi (who formulated UK’s portal hypertension guidelines). Traditionally, the Baveno expert panel is dominated by European and American scholars; however, six Asian experts participated this time, including Associate Professor Luo Xuefeng.

Nine Baveno Consensus panels were responsible for recommendations separately, of which Associate Professor Luo Xuefeng participated in the group of “Acute Variceal Bleeding,” which involved the most important the widest content. Compared with the consensus of the previous version, the 7th edition was added with imaging evaluation of patients with acute hemorrhage, balloon-occluded retrograde transvenous obliteration (BRTO), TIPS Combined with Variceal Embolization and other contents, based on the preliminary work and clinical research of WCH’s interventional hepatology team.

The interventional hepatology team of WCH focuses its research on chronic liver diseases, liver cirrhosis, hepatic vascular diseases and liver tumors; thanks to years of basic and clinical researches, it has won the first prize for Scientific and Technological Progress of Sichuan Province, and published many high-level papers in top journals of digestive and liver diseases such as Hepatology, Journal of Hepatology and Radiology.