As in previous years, the editors have selected topics which are rapidly developing and for which there is a need to communicate new information. For Roma 99 they have chosen nine topics, each subject to a pair of presentations, the first on new disease mechanisms and the second on recent development in clinical management.

John Libbey Eurotext continues to publish the proceedings of the gastroenterology seminars taught by leading European specialists and organised by the European Association for Gastroenterology and Endoscopy (EAGE). The aim of the book is to describe major clinical and therapeutic progress observed during 2002: gastrooesophageal reflux disease, inflammatory bowel disease, irritable bowel syndrome, colon cancer, liver cancer.

During the past five years, evidence based medicine has become the sine qua non of clinical practice. Thus, the rise of evidence-based medicine has re-emphasised the need for high quality evidence that management interventions will actually benefit our patients. The authors have tried to explore some of these areas in the European Association of Gastroenterology and Endoscopy Postgraduate Course held in Birmingham, October 1997.