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“Blood: Cure with care” – Annual Academic Sessions 2023, Sri Lanka College of Transfusion Physicians.

Annual Academic Sessions 2023, Sri Lanka College of Transfusion Physicians was held from 29 June 2023 to 02 July 2023, as a hybrid session at the National Blood Centre, Colombo, Sri Lanka, which was supported by the ISBT academy. The theme for this year was “Blood: Cure with care”, and it included a pre-congress session and a post-congress session.

Sri Lanka College of Transfusion Physicians (SLCTP) is the main academic organization that provides technical expertise to the Ministry of Health (MOH) and National Blood Transfusion Service (NBTS) on matters related to blood donors, donations, processing, Testing, and the organ transplantation where the need arises in Sri Lanka. NBTS has been recognized by the WHO as a collaboration center for South East Asia and all the technical support and input is given by the college as usual.

The scientific programme of the Annual Academic Sessions 2023 was prepared including a wide selection of topics to be presented by renowned experts from the local and international faculties. Some international speakers joined online to deliver their presentations, while all local speakers and two international speakers presented in person. There were symposia on renal transplantation and HIV: moreover, plenaries on clinical transfusion practice, haemoglobinopathies, therapeutic apheresis, and patient blood management. The pre-congress workshop covered topics on HLA in Transfusion and Transplantation including HLA typing, HLA antibody screening, HLA compatibility testing, Interpretation of test results, Clinical correlation, and case scenarios. The post-congress workshop was focused on point-of-care testing.  It comprised a wet workshop to improve hands-on skills with the ROTEM platform and a case-based discussion on the use of point-of-care testing in different settings such as trauma, postpartum hemorrhage, cardiac surgery, and liver transplant. 

Parallel to the congress, abstracts were called and 31 abstracts were selected by a panel of experts in the field. The abstracts comprised scientific research in the field of transfusion medicine, audits, and interesting case presentations. 10 free papers were presented orally and the rest were presented in the form of posters.

Upon request made by the SLCTP, the ISBT academy granted financial support to cover the expenses of the event. It was helpful to conduct the academic activity more successfully.

Overall, the academic session was attractive and the participants were able to gain new knowledge on transfusion as well to refresh their knowledge on transfusion medicine. Moreover, the annual academic session was a good platform to gather the transfusion medicine community of the country to share their experiences and connect with each other.

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