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About this course

Next Course in June 2025.

This is a course which will take place in Barcelona, Spain, from Saturday, 7 June 2025 to Monday, 9 June 2025.

Course description

The early diagnosis of Connective Tissue Diseases has been one of the most important achievement in Rheumatology and imaging advanced technology has helped to reach this result. The aim of the 14th intensive and interactive EULAR Course on Capillaroscopy (CAP) and microvascular status is to provide all participants with an update on the power of the safe and non-invasive nailfold videocapillaroscopy (NVC) technique and related functional tools in the field of rheumatic diseases, in particular for the early diagnosis of the scleroderma spectrum disorders, its predictability and prognostic value, as well as its role as a tool for the therapeutic follow up.

ACR/EULAR stated in the 2013 guidelines for classification criteria of systemic sclerosis (SSc): "Capillaroscopy is now widely used, and considering the value of magnified nailfold visualization in the diagnosis and management of SSc, these new criteria may encourage acquisition of this skill by physicians caring for SSc patients". However, microvascular emerging NVC patterns observed in other connective tissue diseases will be described and discussed, such as in psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis, antiphospholipid syndrome, systemic lupus erythematosus and myositis (including dermatomyositis).

Therefore, the course is structured for a progressive learning, training and testing the achievements by the participants. The EULAR course on NVC, with 20 years of experience (first on 2004), has been successfully tested for both beginners and already trained operators in microcirculation investigations, by over 1400 total participants from almost 70 different countries. Interestingly, in the last 5 years with an impressive trend of growth, more than 520 publications on CAP have become available on PubMed where a total of 1580 papers are reported since 1947.

Participants to the EULAR CAP Course will be fully involved in interactive theoretical and practical sessions (Learning and Testing sessions, including televoting at the beginning and at the end), engaging a large number of rheumatic patients with different pathologies. Updated clinical sessions concerning the diagnostic/prognostic value of NVC in diseases such as systemic sclerosis and the effects of targeted therapies on microcirculation and immune-inflammatory reaction will represent a stimulating gym based on large clinical cases discussion.

Links between the CAP patterns and biomarkers such as autoantibodies (including functional) will also be updated.nIn particular, reading and scoring (manual and the brand new automated systems) of the videocapillaroscopic images of living patients, will be discussed, including the predictive value to identify possible clinical complications (i.e. digital ulcers or pulmonary arterial hypertension) The new guidelines and results regarding the newest and emerging aspects of CAP in pediatric population will be reported. Further sessions will include recent international studies (CAP study) about new predictive models or index based on capillaroscopic analysis. New sessions on practical evaluation of the peripheral blood flow by laser doppler and laser speckeld contrast analysis (LASCA) imaging have been introduced, in order to couple both the morphologic analysis of the microvasculature with the functional evaluation. In addition, practical sessions on skin ultrasound (US) evaluation in scleroderma will be also available and will be combined with the severity of the videocapillaroscopic images (patterns) in the same living patients.

Several monitors will show live on TV screens the practical sessions with patients. Interactive sessions with televote and evaluation of the learning status will be organised at the end of each session. Important links between CAP, Laser blood flow analysis and clinical results of therapies in different rheumatic diseases, will be presented and discussed.

Learning objectives

At the end of this top Course, which is supported by a tutorial team formed by some of the best world experts on the matter, the participants will be able to use the capillaroscopy for their day-to-day diagnosis, choose the functional methods more appropriate for a full analysis of the microvascular status, and will be able to do the staging and the follow-up, in particular of patients affected by scleroderma spectrum disorders. A syllabus of the course with selected slides will be released to all participants after the course in the participants account of the EULAR School of Rheumatology website, after filling in the course overall evaluation form.

Target audience include rheumatologists of any level, dermatologists, internists, angiologists and cardiologists eventually pnaumologists interested in CTDs.

Course Certification

At the end of the course, all participants who have successfully completed the course will receive a certificate of attendance on their EULAR School user account. 100% course attendance is required.