This year’s EFCS Annual Cytology Tutorial was again a great success. The 14th annual EFCS tutorial of Cytopathology was held on June 16-18 in Toulouse (France). The event was chaired by Giovanni Negri and co-chaired by Arrigo Capitanio, and the local Host was Monique Courtade-Saidi. The Tutorial followed the classic format, based on on-site microscopy workshops and lectures covering the most important topics in Cytopathology. Eighty-six virtual slides were available in advance to the participants and were discussed live at the end of each microscopy workshop using the eurocytology.cloud platform. Nine tutors from Croatia, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland were involved in the lectures, including eleven different topics: Urine, breast, thyroid, respiratory tract, pancreatic, serous effusions, salivary gland, soft tissue and gynaecological cytology. Lectures on ROSE, molecular and digital cytology, and HPV have also been included. Social activity included a welcome party and get-together dinner in the background of the beautiful city of Toulouse.
The Fifty-one participants (cytotechnologists, residents and pathologists) came from 22 different countries (Armenia, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, France, French Guiana, Germany, Italy, Luxemburg, Madagascar, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, United Kingdom) took part in the courses, resulting in a highly interested, interactive and receptive international group. All the lectures were recorded, and participants received a link to look again at the presentations.
This year too it was decided to continue and increase the use of digital slides during the workshops, making them available about a month before the start of the Tutorial. The results obtained, i.e. more than 18,000 pages visited in approximately 2,500 visits to the various digital workshops, confirm the validity of this choice and encourage us to continue on this path.
The participants’ feedback has been very positive, with most participants judging the event quality as excellent and extremely useful. Overall, over 90% of the participants would recommend a future tutorial to a colleague and found the virtual slides helpful. Most participants judged the quality of all lectures and workshops as excellent.
Overall, it was a very successful Tutorial and a motivation to continue to organise these events in future years.
Giovanni Negri and Arrigo Capitanio
