The 2025 SECPAL International Congress was conceived as an opportunity to rethink and expand palliative care beyond the traditional healthcare model, recognizing its complex, multidimensional, and deeply human nature.

The Guide to Preconception Counseling and Healthy Pregnancy (2025) by the Spanish General Nursing Council offers a comprehensive framework for preconception and prenatal care within the nursing practice. Its fundamental aim is to detect and mitigate modifiable health, behavioral, and psychosocial risks before conception, enhancing both maternal and perinatal health outcomes.

The 2025 ESC Guidelines on Mental Health and Cardiovascular Disease represent a significant step forward in the integration of medical and psychological disciplines. The document highlights the bidirectional relationship between mental disorders and cardiovascular disease: depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder increase cardiovascular risk, while living with chronic heart disease raises the likelihood of developing emotional problems.

Recent international research on the economic implications of urinary incontinence reveals that the expenses associated with continence care are projected to exceed 40 billion Euros in 2023. These costs encompass the effects of incontinence on individual health, expenses related to medical consultations and products like continence pads, work absenteeism due to incontinence, etc. Without proactive measures to support continence health, incontinence is poised to evolve into a significant health challenge in Europe, particularly exacerbated by an aging population.

Most contraceptive pills are based on a cycle of taking the pill for 21 days, and then stopping the pill for 7 days. Now researchers have found that women’s mood worsens during the 7 pill-free days. This work will be presented at the ECNP congress in Barcelona on 8th October, after its recent publication in JAMA Network Open on 27th September 2023

It is estimated that over 5-10% of individuals who have survived COVID-19 experience a post-viral syndrome known as post-COVID-19 condition (PCC), post-acute COVID-19 sequelae (PACS), or "Long COVID”. PCC encompasses a range of persistent, incapacitating symptoms and medical issues that frequently result in physical, social, and psychological impairment, significantly affecting the quality of life for patients. Up to date it remains uncertain whether PCC represents a singular entity or a diverse syndrome with shared underlying pathophysiological factors.

The 2023 ESC Guidelines for the Management of Cardiomyopathies were presented at the European Congress of Cardiology, which took place in Amsterdam from August 25 to 28. Dr. Elena Arbelo, coordinator of the Cardiac Genetic Diseases and Sudden Arrhythmic Death Unit at Hospital Clinic de Barcelona, together with Dr. Juan Kaski, professor of pediatric inherited cardiovascular medicine at the University College of London, has led the development and presentation of this pioneering text.

Data from a new pan-European study on the burden of digestive diseases1, presented today at UEG Week 2022 and published in the United European Gastroenterology Journal, highlights a worrying increase in the prevalence of several digestive diseases since 2000. These include chronic liver diseases, pancreatitis, gastroesophageal reflux disease, gastritis, vascular intestinal disorders and coeliac disease in children. In addition, the incidence and mortality rates for all digestive cancers combined have increased by 26% and 17% respectively in the period 2000-2019.

Eating a Mediterranean diet, rich in fibre, mono-unsaturated fatty acids and polyphenols, has been associated with improved immunotherapy response rates and progression-free survival in advanced melanoma patients, a new study presented today at UEG Week 2022 has found

Babies and children under three years old are less likely to develop croup if their mothers took fish oil and vitamin D supplements during pregnancy, according to new results from a clinical trial. The findings are from a randomised controlled trial – the ‘gold standard’ for medical research – that will be presented at the European Respiratory Society International Congress in Barcelona, Spain. It is the first large study of its kind to investigate the effects of vitamin D and fish oil on croup.