Dear Colleagues, Dear Friends,

We hope you do fine and remain corona-free.

This pandemic has put our lives and clinical practices under substantial stress. It also has profoundly disturbed the agenda of the Royal Belgian Society of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology, Head and Neck Surgery (B-ORL). Both the 'Spring' and 'Annual' congress had to be cancelled; because both meetings coincided with the peak moments of the two Covid-19 waves. We all prefer real 'live' congresses where colleagues can meet, present their work, discuss their research or their clinical experience and exchange ideas. Under the present 'unfortunate evolutionary pressure', caused by the pandemic, we have been forced to adapt and convert the format of a live congress to a 'virtual' meeting, not the least in order to guarantee our mission statement of continuous education.

Please find here below the program of the first on-line congress of B-ORL. The goal is that young colleagues can present their work and that these presentations will alternate with keynote lectures by more experienced colleagues. Two well-balanced sessions have been organized: one on Friday afternoon 20 November and one on Saturday morning 21 November. The meeting has been organized in close collaboration with B-Audio; they have two sessions on Friday (20/11) (morning and afternoon) that can be followed as well by our members. More information on the B-Audio Friday afternoon sessions can be found at www.B-Audio.eu.

No subscription fee will be required to attend the meeting: our treasurer and sponsors generously offer the access to this new educational platform developed in collaboration with the congress organizer Semico.

Please register for our virtual event via the website www.ORL-NKO.be. You then will receive a unique link (log-in) to attend each of the sessions.

We hope you will find this new format practical, useful and above all instructive.

Hopefully we willreturn to a more normal life in the coming months and be allowed to meet again in real congresses next year.

Download the program

Take care and stay healthy,

Sincerely yours,

Thomas Somers President of B-ORL 2020

Dear Colleague,

At the tele-meeting of the Board of Directors of B-ORL on 8 September, it was decided to cancel the in persona form of the Annual Congress that was scheduled for 20 and 21 November 2020 in the Flanders Meeting and Convention Center in Antwerp, in view of the current COVID measures and the major uncertainties surrounding organizing a normal physical conference during the coming autumn period.

Preparation of an alternative digital program is ongoing.

We deeply regret this as this is the most important Belgian ENT meeting of the year where colleagues can present their work and where they can meet before and after the lectures and expand their social network. An interesting program was ready and well-balanced, a program where younger colleagues could exchange ideas with experienced colleagues and foreign guest speakers.

Unfortunately, the COVID epidemic has prevented this, as was the case with the Spring Meeting this year and we assume that this will also be the case with the Spring Meeting of 2021.

The Board of Directors has already decided to ask Semico to refund the Registration Fees for the Spring Meeting of 2020.

It has also been decided that we, together with Prof. Marie-Paule Thill, the chairperson in 2021, will try to present a beautiful and instructive Annual Congress in the fall of 2021.

However, in order to be able to meet the wishes for further training and accreditation and to meet the recognition criteria for assistants, we will, in collaboration with Semico, develop an alternative digital program.

This symposium will take place on the same days as the Annual Congress, namely on Friday 20/11/2020 in the afternoon as well as on Saturday morning 21/11/2020, each time during three hours. We would like to emphasize the lectures that allow our younger colleagues to present their work, alternated with short keynote lectures by domestic and foreign experts. Accreditation for this activity will also be applied for at the RIZIV/INAMI.

The originally chosen theme for the planned autumn symposium was: “ENT practice in the digital age”. So here we are, although forced by Corona, with our “changing times”!

With collegial and best regards,

Thomas Somers