It is our greatest pleasure to invite you to the 12^th Symposium on Portal Hypertension in Banska Stiavnica. We have announced both the new date[1] and the new (Club) format of SPH at the last year’s meeting and then have – not entirely without purpouse – restrained from spreading explicit assigment proposals until the last minute. The intention was to tilt the usual presentation:discussion balance to the discussion side in order to squeeze the inspirational power of impromptu and approximate standards of care, acknowledge running research projects and ivite to multicentric endeavours or external validations.

Presentations from liver units in program domains of WHAT’S UP, PREDICTION, MICROBIOME, and OFF-VOGUE should open and catalyze panel discussions which will be recorded, transcribed and distributed (Delphi-like) for your comments, ammendments, and approval to be published either as guidances or study protocols.

The highlight of this year’s SPH Club is the panel discussion on status quo and perspective of  SCREENING for liver diseases in Europe which will be introduced by the state-of-the art lecture by professor Pere Ginés with subsequent panel discussion moderated by Croatia  – CE country with the longest and richest screening history – and the LiverScreen representatives. On the Sunday morning, we have organized liver screening day of the Slovak society of hepatology SIRIUS in Banska Stiavnica for you to visit and see our methodology first hand.

On the March 18th, the historical centre of Banska Stiavnica was on fire which had temporarily stunned the SPH organization but, according to the latest news the tragedy should not have any serious modifying consequences to the meeting.

Dear colleagues, we are looking forward to meeting you in Slovakia and we hope to contribute permissive milieu to harmonic vibrations of collective consciousness and see it materialize to palpable and measurable outcome.

Yours sincerely

Lubomir Skladany, Svetlana Adamcova-Selcanova and Peter Slovak