Welcome to the
International Intestinal Rehabilitation & Transplant Association
THANK YOU FOR ATTENDING CIIRTA 2025
Intestinal Failure Journal
A Message from the IIRTA President - October 2025
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Thank you for attending the 19th CIIRTA in Gothenburg. The meeting was a great success, marked by lively discussions and the sharing of up-to-date knowledge. I extend my gratitude to Gustav Herlenius, Mihai Oltean and the local team for their hard work in putting together a fantastic program, as well as to Jonathan Hind for his leadership in making this event a success.
One of the highlights of the event was the gala dinner. Dancing and singing along to ABBA songs was a delightful experience that brought us together. However, what resonated with me the most were the remarks from our colleagues. Dr. Kareem Abu-Elmagd delivered a powerful message, followed by heartfelt comments from Dr. Jonathan Hind and an emotional speech from Dr. Mihai Oletan. These moments reminded us of the vital role our society plays and who we are. We are a unique group of professionals dedicated to caring for these extremely challenging patients. We have made significant strides over the past two decades, achieving substantial improvements in outcomes for patients suffering from intestinal failure. Nonetheless, there is still much work ahead. I am honored to take on the role of President of the Association and feel a deep responsibility to address the challenges that lie ahead.
Tokyo will be our next venue, and we were all excited to hear their vision during the closing ceremony. I look forward to collaborating with the Tokyo team to ensure another successful event. Visit the website (coming soon) for updates www.ciirta2027.org.
I wish you all pleasant fall (or spring) and hope to see you all in Tokyo in 2027.
Congratulations to our Distinguished Service Awardees
International Intestinal Transplant Registry (IITR)
IIRTA Survey - Outcomes for Abdominal Wall Closer in Transplant Patients
As you will certainly know, non-vascularized rectus fascia (NVRF) transplantation was first described in 2009 (Gondolesi et al. Transplantation 2009;87:1884–8) as a novel technique to close the abdominal wall after solid organ transplantation. By using this technique, extensive abdominal wall repair was avoided and the technique is gaining interest worldwide. Later the vascularized fascia transplant was introduced as alternative (VRF).
So far, experience with (N)VRF transplantation is scarcely reported. At our transplant center in Leuven, Belgium, we performed our first case of NVRF transplant in September 2020. Dr. Nele Van De Winkel is an abdominal surgeon at our center who is specialized in abdominal wall surgery. Based on her specialty she developed a specific interest regarding (N)VRF and is currently working on a PhD thesis on this topic. She recently completed a systematic literature review, published in Transplantation Reviews (2021 Jun 4;35(4):100634). This review revealed that data on long-term outcome following NVRF regarding the strength and functionality of the abdominal wall is scarce.
Therefore we took the initiative for a multi-center survey on this topic to collect and analyze the world-wide practice and long-term outcome after (non-)vascularized fascia transplantation.
For this survey we have developed an excel sheet (1 excel file) and survey manual (PDF). We would be very grateful if you or one of your team members could have a look into this questionnaire and return your response directly to Nele (nele.vandewinkel@uzleuven.be) (1 sheet for each individual case).
It would be worth considering to publish in the near future the results of this multicenter survey if we can collect a sufficient number of cases performed worldwide. Participating centers would of course be granted a co-authorship.
Many thanks for your help and support. Please do not hesitate to contact us directly in case you have any further questions on this email.
Best regards,
Laurens Ceulemans (transplant surgeon)
Nele Van De Winkel (abdominal surgeon and PhD student)
On behalf of the Leuven LIFT team
Social
Contact
Address
International Intestinal Rehabilitation & Transplant Association
c/o The Transplantation Society
740 Notre-Dame Ouest
Suite 1245
Montréal, QC, H3C 3X6
Canada