Committee, Council & SIG Updates
The Nutrition Society
Dr Caroline Childs, BAPEN Council Member, Associate Professor, University of Southampton, The Nutrition Society Clinical/Medical Advisory Council member
Email: office@nutritionsociety.org
Website: www.nutritionsociety.org
X: @Nutritionsoc
Instagram: the_nutrition_society
LinkedIn: /nutrition-society
Happy New Year readers! I hope you all had a restful festive break after a busy 2023.
I had a wonderful time at the BAPEN Annual Conference last November in Edinburgh. It was a pleasure to meet so many BAPEN members in person and to see such high-quality talks and posters, and those visiting the Nutrition Society exhibition stand. Congratulations to all the organisers on a wonderful event.
BAPEN members are very welcome at the Nutrition Society’s events and webinars. Full details of the latest events can be viewed here: www.nutritionsociety.org/conferences/conferences.
Here are some upcoming events you might like to note in your diary:
- Nutrition Society Irish Postgraduate Conference, 21-23 February 2024, Athlone, Ireland – talks include the role of riboflavin deficiency in pregnancy, and findings from healthcare professionals (HCPs) and women with lived experience of gestational diabetes in Ireland.
- Half-day Conference Online, 27th February 2024 – is there a role for fungal protein category within food based dietary guidelines and how is this best communicated?
- Scottish Section Conference, 26-27 March 2024, University of Aberdeen. The focus of this meeting will be the role of circadian rhythms in health, how it can affect sleep, dietary choices and the overall impact on disease risk.
The Nutrition Society Academy continues to be an excellent resource with over 70 scientific and skills-based webinars available from £4.99 per month. With new webinars being added weekly, the Academy aims to upskill nutrition and HCPs by providing regular, evidence-based webinars, workshops and courses to develop nutrition science knowledge and enhance professional skills. Explore the platform here: https://nutritionsociety.academy.
The Society’s last conference on the 2023 calendar was the Winter Conference on the topic of ‘Diet and lifestyle strategies for prevention and management of multimorbidity’. The conference explored pathways for prevention of multimorbidity across the life course, the role of ageing and the gut-brain-heart connection. Presented abstracts and speaker review papers will be published in the Proceedings of the Nutrition Society in the coming months.
The Nutrition Society continues to build relationships within the medical community: we hosted an exhibition stand at the Association for the Study of Obesity conference in Belfast and held our annual cancer networking event in September. During the Federation of European Nutrition Societies 14th European Nutrition Conference in Belgrade, we hosted a joint symposium with the Société Française de Nutrition on the role of diet and nutrition before, during and after cancer treatment. I will continue to engage with the needs of the BAPEN community through my role on BAPEN council, together with the Nutrition Society’s Medical Working Group, chaired by Dr Hannah O’Hara, Clinical Lecturer at Queen’s University Belfast.
All my very best,
Caroline
British Intestinal Failure Alliance (BIFA)
Jeremy Nightingale, Chairman
Kirstine Farrer, Secretary
Website: www.bapen.org.uk/groups/bapen-special-interest-groups/british-intestinal-failure-alliance-bifa/
We think it is a good time to reflect and share information about our most popular downloaded documents from the BAPEN website. The top 5 are: Top Tips on “Management of a high output stoma”, Guidelines on “The diagnosis and management intestinal failure associated liver disease”, Position Statement on “The use of GLP-2 analogues and other growth factors for adult patients with intestinal failure”, Top Tips on “Nutritional and fluid assessment of patients with intestinal failure”, and Position Statement on “The use of high dose loperamide in patients with intestinal failure”.
We would be interested to hear if this resonates with your practice and if any BIFA documents have helped with management of a patient; have the documents met your CDP needs or sparked a debate at your team journal club? Any comments on any of our publications are very welcome. We are also open to suggestions on new topics for Guidelines and Recommendations, and Top Tips. We have added a new tutorial videos section to our BIFA webpage. There is a video on “catheter repair”; we would like to hear from nursing colleagues if this has been useful in your practice? Please do get in touch with us via the BAPEN office.
The BIFA committee is currently updating several of the Guidelines and Recommendations (e.g. “The use of cyclizine in patients receiving parenteral nutrition” and “The use of high dose loperamide in patients with intestinal failure”). Our latest Top tips on “Conception and pregnancy in chronic intestinal failure” is presented in this issue.
Of note to colleagues in England is the new NHSE commissioning statement on parenteral nutrition for the treatment of adults and children with type 2 and type 3 Intestinal Failure (IF) requiring Home Parenteral Support (HPS). You can view this here: www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/2267-hpn-commissioning-statement.pdf.
This commissioning statement sets out the pathway for the treatment of adults and children with type 2 and type 3 IF with HPS. This commissioning statement aims to maximise the best use of the available limited compounding capacity by identifying patients suitable for Multi Chamber Bags (MCBs), or a hybrid approach, thereby prioritising compounded parenteral nutrition (PN) for patients requiring individualised nutrition.
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