Women’s Health Issues in Thrombosis and Haemostasis
DRAFT Subcommittee Minutes
23 July 2011
09:00-13:00
Room B-1
Chairman: Sabine Eichinger (AT)
Co-chairmen: Benjamin Brenner (IL), Jacqueline Conard (FR), Andra James (US), Takao Kobayashi (JP), Barbara Konkle (US), Peter Kouides (US), Claire McLintock (NZ), Claire Philipp (US)
Start: 9:00 am
Attendants: ~ 150
Welcome and Introduction of Co-chairpersons (S. Eichinger)
Sabine Eichinger welcomed all participants also on behalf of the co-chairpersons. She provided an overview of the program and reasons for changes in the program as Benjamin Brenner and his coworker Yona Nadir as well as Claire Philipp could not attend the meeting.
Educational Session (S. Eichinger)
Educational activities are an integral part of the work of the SSC on WHITH. This year’s Educational Session covered three topics:
- Management of thrombocytopenia during pregnancy - A. James, USA
- Diagnosis of VTE during pregnancy - M. Huisman, The Netherlands
- Management of obstetric hemorrhage – C. McLintock, New Zealand
These topics were chosen because of relevance and also to avoid overlap with State-of-the-Art lectures within the congress.
The session was very well attended and a large proportion of attendees continued to stay at our meeting.
Other Educational Activities
Sabine Eichinger excused Benjamin Brenner and briefly mentioned his activities regarding the organization of the 4th International Symposium on Women’s Health Issues in Thrombosis and Haemostasis, which was held in February 2011 in Berlin.
The SSC will also try to expand educational activities within the ISTH in particular to reach out to low resource countries and to address their needs.
Menorrhagia Working Group
The menorraghia working party has very successfully been led by Claire Philipp together with Peter Kouides, Rochelle Winikoff and Rezan Kadir. Claire Philipp had to cancel her trip in the last minute due to personal reasons. One of the major issues within the group is the validation of the “Bleeding Assessment Tool” which has been developed in a joint project with the Subcommittee on vWF and Perinatal/Pediatric Thrombosis and Hemostasis. One approach would be to use the US prospective data collection in women which was presented by Roshni Kulkarni also on behalf of Peter Kouides.
Databases would also availabe from Canada as presented by Rochelle Winikoff.
Sabine Eichinger and Claire Philipp are now active in the “Bleeding Assessment Tool Standing Committee” of the ISTH and will pursue validation possibilites of the score.
Rezan Kadir gave an update on activities to improve prenatal diagnosis of haemophilia and presented innovative methods.
Symposium in Honour of Margareta Blombäck
Margareta Blombäck retired as a co-chairperson. She was a major force in the initiation of the SSC on WHITH. That is why we decided to honour her contributions to the society and to our SSC in particular by a special symposium. Jacqueline Conard hosted the session and provided an overview of the enormous achievements of Margareta Blombäck and also a history of the “birth” of our SSC.
Margareta then shared original data from her own lab on the fibrinolytic profile in patients with myocardial infarction with the audience.
Takao Kobayashi eluded on the problem of fibrinogen deficiency during pregnancy.
The symposium was overall well perceived and attended by many long time friends of Margareta.
SSC projects
Diagnosis of VTE during pregnancy is one of the main projects of our SSC. Several presenters were originally planned to contribute to this topic, but could not attend the meeting for personal reasons. Thus, Menno Huisman covered all these presentations in one talk. He introduced the activities with regard to clinical studies that have been going on or have been initiated since last years meeting.
We will continue with this project and enforce collaboration within these studies as these are rare conditions and adequate studies can only be accomplished by multicenter activities.
Finally, Saskia Middeldorp introduced a new study (HIGHLOW) to investigate two different doses of LMWH for preventing recurrent VTE in pregnant women. Again, rare events that will need the contribution of many investigators to fulfil the required number of patients.
The presentation on heparanse procoagulant activity in oral contraceptive users and pregnancy had to be cancelled because of the absence of Yona Nadir.
Update on Registries
Andra James provided the current status of registries. There are currently no active registries of our SSC. As explained by Andra James, conduct of registry in general is cumbersome because of lack of funding, legal issues (uncertainties about IRB approval, patient consent), IT aspects and adherence of participating investigators.
Closing Remarks (S. Eichinger)
End: 1:10 pm
