ITALIAN INSIGHTS FROM ESPEN

From ESPEN 2018, Madrid September 1-4 September.

MB: Meg Blog here again at the ESPEN Congress here on the last morning, and I’m here with two Italian doctors that specialise in clinical nutrition, and we’re going to have a short chat with them. Please introduce yourselves.

ER: Hi, my name is Emanuele Rinninella. I am a physician and I work in the field of clinical nutrition at Policlinico Gemelli in Rome, Italy. This is for me exciting to be here, it’s a beautiful congress with many people from every countries of the world and many hot topics. My interest in clinical nutrition goes through several items from body composition to gastrointestinal disease to enteral and parenteral nutrition to rare diseases. So, for me it is a great opportunity to improve my work when I return back home.  

MB: Okay, super, and we have then Dr Marco Chintoni.

MC: Hello everybody, I’m Marco Chintoni, I’m a medical doctor from Rome. I’m attending my fellow school in clinical nutrition and food science in Rome. I’m so excited to participate at this congress. This year, there are a lot of people, a very a lot of people, and there was released just yesterday new definition of malnutrition and this will be very useful for our clinical nutrition experience in the real field with the patients.

MB: Do you think this meeting is suitable for all types of doctors?

MC: Yeah, I think, yes, there are a lot of very interesting fields that are related to nutrition: oncology, gastroenterology, all type of physician can have link with clinical nutrition. So I think yes.

Yes, I think so. All specialists should be here because clinical nutrition is not a specialty that should be held on. It especially should be translated in many fields of the medicine. Until this not happen all the medicine could be limited in all the fields. So oncologists should be here, gastroenterologists should be here, nephrologists should be here, just like anaesthesiologists are here in this moment.

MB: So this blog that we have is actually for the intensive care community. Should they be here as well? For the intensive care community, for the acute care critically ill, should they be here as well?

MC: Yeah, sure. Acute care, ICU, but also chronic disease physician. So all the specialists should be here, not only acute but chronic. Yeah.

In critical area this is an important thing. Nutrition is very important in the acute phase of the patients. So I think critical care should be here.

MB: It seems as though that nutrition is still not top priority in some of the speciality areas. As younger clinicians why do you think this is? Why are we taking so long to understand the importance?

MC: The importance of protein?

MB: Nutrition.

MC: I think nutrition was for a long time not so important for a lot of generation of physician. I don’t know why, perhaps it not doing directly from physician in many states. So for example in United States this is…I don’t know.

I think the problem is that clinical nutrition is not actually included in the study plan of medical students in Italy. This is very limiting because when you are doctor you don’t know clinical nutrition. You know cardiology, you know gastroenterology, you know internal medicine, but you don’t know clinical nutrition. How you can manage clinical nutrition when you did not study it in the medical plan, study plan – as fellowship. So it’s very important to study clinical nutrition in the years of the plan of study before the degree. 

MB: Well that makes sense. I think the medical community are very lucky to have people like you who are up and coming and forward thinking and embracing this big challenge. Thanks very much for your time.