S5 SPECIAL 5 - Reviewing EASL Congress: Louise Campbell 3 (first-time material)

This week, Surfing the MASH Tsunami looks back on interviews Roger Green conducted during the EASL Congress itself. This conversation with SurfingMASH co-host and Tawazun Health Founder and Clinical Director Louise Campbell took place on the last day of the Congress This portion of the conversation was not included in the original S5 E19 but instead was reserved for a special conversation at a later time (now).

The specific focus of this conversation is on how practice patterns and guidelines are likely to change over the next several years. One driving factor involves the need to get primary care not only involved but actively committed to playing a leading role in treatment, given how quickly the identified patient population might grow. Louise points out that the overall rate of growth might be one longer-term issue, but in the short term, dramatic increases in the number of patients with cirrhosis will be a more immediate concern. She questions how staffing and training will address both challenges, with more patients being diagnosed in earlier-stage MASLD patients, coupled with more late-stage fibrosis and cirrhosis. She speaks specifically about a poster looking at liver disease as a factor for cardiac arrhythmias and the seemingly confounding idea that play three, while a genetic target to predict muscle, might also be cardioprotective within the muscle population. However, it has no effect on muscle progression or other just related diseases. This leads Louise to one more optimistic conclusion this time that we will see broader collaboration between specialties over time as we appreciate the scope and complexity that comes from viewing muscle as part of the broader metabolic disease continuum.