To update knowledge and share experiences on new approaches to treat the allergic disease is the purpose of the 2 nd National Congress of Immunoallergology , within the Hospital da Luz network of hospitals and clinics (Luz Saúde Group), which will take place next May 21 in webinar format. “We will gather once again the maximum of Luz Saúde immunoallergologists from all over the country as possible, as well as specialists of national and international reputation in different fields of this specialty”, explains Luís Miguel Borrego , the director of the Centre of Allergy and Immunity from Hospital da Luz Lisboa, who is the responsible for the organization of the congress. “It will be, undoubtedly, one more positive experience for all participants”, he adds, recalling the experience from exactly a year ago, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, when this team organized the 1 st Congress. Already at that time, the works took place on webinar platform, which was an innovation: this was the first congress of immunoallergology specialists in Portugal held in this format. The program of the 2021 edition views to repeat the success of the 2020 congress: “a wonderful moment of science and clinical practice”, as it was then characterized by Manuel Branco Ferreira , the president of the Portuguese Society of Allergology and Clinical Immunology (SPAIC), that will be present once again this year, offering its scientific sponsorship. The 2 nd National Congress of Immunoallerglogy of Luz Saúde – with a program having for motto “Innovating and revisiting allergy” – will be organized in four clinical sessions and two conferences. In the clinical sessions , four major current topics will be approached: the connection between allergic disease and other pathologies, and the need of a multidisciplinary response; innovation in allergy (the technologies that allow monitoring the therapies prescribed to the patient); the new predictive biomarkers and provocation and/or desensitization tests in drug allergy; and, finally, the alterations imposed by Covid-19 at the level of therapeutics of chronic allergic disease and acute allergic disease. The congress will count with the participation of renowned national specialists, from Hospital da Luz network units and from other hospital centres. The two planned conferences deserve a special emphasis, considering their themes and speakers: The challenges posed by telemedicine at the level of safety in clinical practice and confidentiality of the relation physician-patient, will be the theme of the first conference, to be conducted by one of the main Portuguese specialists in the area: Lino Santos , the coordinator of the National Centre of Cybersecurity. The closing conference will be given by the North-American physician and researcher, David Fleischer , the director of the Allergy and Immunology Centre from the Children’s Hospital in Colorado, who will present the latest results of his research on food allergies (mostly peanuts and nuts allergies) and the treatments for these pathologies. In this Luz Saúde congress, he will approach oral, sublingual and epicutaneous immunotherapies, trying to answer the question he has specially dedicated his work to: “Why do certain patients with food allergies overcome them quicker and earlier than others?”. Date and schedule: May 21, 2021, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., and from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. Enrolment and program
