Editor’s note:
From March 27 to 31, 2024, the 33rd Annual Meeting of the Asian Pacific Association for the Study of the Liver (APASL 2024) was held in Kyoto, Japan. As a top international conference, this year’s APASL annual meeting brings together a large number of the latest research progress. After the feast, the heat did not abate. In the multi-day academic feast, what important research, cutting-edge views have been released, and what novel news events have occurred, let us listen to Dr. Jimmy Che-To LAI of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, China, and once again feel the pulse of Asia in the field of liver disease.
Hepatology Digest : Congratulations, you have won the travel award. So how do you feel about this? And what’s your expectations for the future?
Dr. Jimmy Che-To LAI: Thank you very much. And also thank you so much for the inviting me to speak in this interview. It is a great honor to receive both the travel award as well as the investigator award in APASL this year. I hope that my research can move forward the field as I would focus more on the management and diagnosis of portal hypertension and cirrhosis.
And then with that, I am truly honored to receive the prize and as well, I hope by using my research output, we can move the field either forward with all the use of non-invasive assessments and all the clinical outcomes to bring forward what we can do more for patients with cirrhosis. Thank you.
<Hepatology Digest>: You had two oral presentations focusing on patients with liver cirrhosis and pleural effusion (O-0977, O-0981) in this conference. Can you give me a simple introduction?
Dr. Jimmy Che-To LAI: Sure. My two oral presentations mainly focus on the hepatic hydrothorax patients who suffered from cirrhosis in our cohort. And we have included more than 3,000 patients who suffered from cirrhosis as well as hepatic hydrothorax. We studied the secular trend of the incidence rate as well as the mortality of hepatic hydrothorax. And we realize that for the patients that we recruited in Hong Kong, we showed a decreasing trend of this important complication throughout the past decade, but with an initial rise in the trend beforehand. We may postulate that this trend is likely related to an improved treatment for chronic viral hepatitis patients, such as antiviral treatment for chronic hepatitis B and C
Hepatology Digest : In this conference, what’s your interested research? How do you feel about the whole conference?
Dr. Jimmy Che-To LAI: In fact, this is really a good conference; well organized with a lot of discussions as well as very fruitful lectures that I also learned a lot, and as well to explore and have some brainstorming on the future research areas with all the collaborations and also discussions with other world-famous experts. Probably, I hope, with the use of this setting, we can also generate newer research ideas and as well to have some international collaborations.
