Report of the 10th Congress of Iranian Organ Transplantation Society

Abstract

The 10th International Congress of Iranian Organ Transplantation Society (IRSOT) was held in May 18–20, 2011 in the city of Shiraz, southern Iran. The Congress was attended by around 700 participants including 15 transplant surgeons or clinicians from the re¬gion, Europe and the United States. The congress was a forum for sharing ideas, experience and research findings among transplant researchers. During the Congress, in two sessions, almost 50 posters and 40 oral presentations were presented various aspects of organ transplantation. Dr. Hassan Rizvi of Pakistan, Dr. Mostafa Al-Moosavi of Kuwait, Dr. Iraj Fazel of Iran and Dr. Nabil Mohsen of Oman talked about the ethics of organ transplantation. They emphasized that unrelated organ transplantation and organ commercialization are unethical. Dr. Rizvi discussed the measures adopted to prevent organ commercialization in Pakistan. All of the speakers and audience of the session did emphasize on the observation of the Istanbul Declaration. The Congress enjoyed participation of Dr. John Fung from Cleveland Clinic; he presented two talks on new developments in immunosuppressive drugs and tolerance in transplanted patients. In both talks, he foretold a promising future in terms of life expectancy of such patients. He also gave a concise account of corneal transplantation methods used worldwide. An Italian group led by Dr. Mario Rizzeto spoke about the most recent methods of treating hepatitis B in liver transplant patients. The subject was enriched by talks gave by Dr. Lanka¬rani of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences and Dr. Alavian of Baghiyatallah University, who echoed the significance and approaches to the treatment of the disease. Dr. Eghtesad of Cleveland Clinic, in two separate talks spoke about the new developments of intestinal transplantation and management of brain-dead patients. Dr. Shokouh Amiri of Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center enlightened the audience about his own newly es-tablished techniques for pancreas transplantation. The subject was enriched by talks gave by Dr. Laftavi of State University of New York at Buffalo, who presented his accounts of recent develop-ments in pancreas transplantation. Dr. Bassam Saeed of MESOT fellowship Program in Syria explained the rule of regulations of the program. In his talk, Dr. Al-Abdullah of the City of Hope National Medical Center and Beck¬man Research Institute in Duarte California discussed the recent developments in cell therapy of diabetes using pancreatic islet cells. During the Congress, there were free tours for the participants to sightseeing and historical places including the ancient city of Persepolis as well as mausoleum of Sadi and Hafez, two of the internationally well-known Iranian poets living around 800 years ago, and Shiraz beautiful Gar¬dens. Also, there was a gala dinner for all participants hosted jointly by the city’s mayor and the president of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences.