The scientific focus of the working group for endoscopy is on clinical research. Our goal is to analyze, optimize and further develop new technologies with regard to their patient benefit. This refers to technical innovations or further developments in the field of endoscopy devices themselves (capsule endoscopy, endomicroscopy, cholangioscopy), accessories such as stents, new therapeutic procedures such as radiofrequency ablation or photodynamic therapy, and ultimately also drugs used, for example, for bleeding in the gastrointestinal tract.
In addition to common gastrointestinal diseases (tumors, bleeding), there is also a focus on rare disease patterns such as graft-versus-host disease or MALT lymphoma. Of course, there is a close cooperation with colleagues in surgery, oncology and pathology.
The portfolio of our completed and ongoing studies includes participation in large sponsor-initiated multicenter studies (e.g., evaluation of fully coated biliary stents for benign biliary obstruction) as well as small academic pilot studies (e.g., endomicroscopy for Barrett's esophagus or MALT lymphoma).
Overall, it should still be noted that gastrointestinal endoscopy has evolved over the last decades from a purely diagnostic discipline to an increasingly therapeutic, interventional application, thus representing a major technology driver of medical progress.