The translation of new molecular understanding of disease into clinical practice in gastroenterology is a special challenge. The Falk Symposium No. 160, entitled 'Pathogenesis and Clinical Practice in Gastroenterology', held 15-16 June 2007 in Portoroz, Slovenia, provided a stimulating framework to bridge discussions from bench to bedside. The proceedings of the symposium are contained in this book, and the unifying theme is the growing understanding of inflammation as a driving force in chronic disease leading to disability and malignancy.

"List of principal contributors.- List of chairpersons.- Preface.- Section I: Dysphagia and reflux.- Section II: Helicobacter pylori, NSAID, gastric cancer.- Section III: Inflammatory bowel disease section.- Section IV: Lower gastrointestinal tract (coeliac disease, infection and malignancy).- Section V: clinical challenges in liver diseases.- Section VI: viral hepatitis.- Section VII: Metabolic and autoimmune liver injury.- Section VIII: Complications of cirrhosis.- Index."

Dysphagia and reflux.- Physiology of swallowing and antireflux mechanisms: anything new from a radiologist's view?.- Oropharyngeal dysphagia, achalasia, and other oesophageal motility problems: clinical relevance and management.- Outcomes of different treatment opproaches for gastro-oesophageal reflux disease.- Barrett's oesophagus: screening, surveillance, treatment: are all questions answered?.- Helicobacter pylori, NSAID, gastric cancer.- Helicobacter pylori infection: diagnosis, treatment and risks of untreated infection.- Inflammatory bowel disease section.- Genetics, Immunology and biomarkers in clinical practice: do they assist in clinical management?.- Standard therapy for ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease: the ECCO guidelines.- Biologics, novel therapeutic alternatives in inflammatory bowel disease.- Lower gastrointestinal tract (coeliac disease, infection and malignancy).- Recent advances in coeliac disease.- Gastrointestinal manlfestations of AIDS.- Prevention and screening for colorectal cancer.- Lymphomas of the gastrointestinal tract.- Clinical challenges in liver diseases.- Do we still need liver biopsies?.- Inflammation and human cancer.- Viral hepatitis.- New insights in the immunology of viral hepatitis B and C.- New aspects of treatment of chronic hepatitis C.- Metabolic and autoimmune liver injury.- Non-alcoholic steatohepatitis: metabolic syndrome of the liver.- Autoimmune hepatitis.- Immunology of primary biliary cirrhosis and primary sclerosing cholangitis.- Alcoholic hepatitis.- Complications of cirrhosis.- Hepatorenal syndrome in cirrhosis.- Variceal bleeding.- Surveillance and prevention of hepatocellular carcinoma.- Algorithms of diagnosis and options of hepatocellular carcinoma therapy.- Surgical therapy of liver cancer: resectionand transplantation.