39th Conference of the German Society for Clinical Microcirculation and Hemorheology (DGKMH)

The 39th conference of the German Society for Clinical Microcirculation and Hemorheology was held at Hannover, 6– 7 November 2020.The conference was organized by Prof. Dr. B. Hiebl from the Institute for Animal Hygiene, Animal Welfare and Farm Animal Behaviour, University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover Foundation, Hannover, Germany. Embedded in the conference of the DGKMH was the conference of the German Society for Cellular Biotechnology – the sister society of the DGKMH and the annual meeting of the 3R-SMART teaching platform for alternative methods to animal testing. Both conferences were organized as completely delocalized, with the speakers and attendees scattered across Germany, connected via a video-conferencing tool and social media. Despite this delocalization, the meeting retained many characteristics of a traditional conference: invited and contributed talks with follow-up questions and discussion.

The congress was opened with a lecture by Prof. Breves on “Alternatives to animal testing”, one of the main topics of the conference.

In addition, Prof. Dr. B. Hiebl, the President of the conference, organized a workshop about “3R – Alternative Methods to animal testing”.

The conference counted with more than 100 participants mainly from Germany but also from other European countries. A high-level scientific program was produced with excellent scientific presentations contributing to the increase of knowledge of basic and clinical hemorheology and microcirculation. The focus of the conference was traditionally oriented to the scientific interests of the society members, which are physiology and pathophysiology, pre-clinical and clinical studies, interactions of blood and tissue cells with body foreign materials, surgical and conservative therapy of lymph edema, cutaneous microangiopathy of severe vascular diseases as well as the diagnostic value of contrast-enhanced ultrasound. The central features of the conference- according to the profession of the conference President – were alternative methods to animal testing as well as animal studies.

During fruitful discussions new questions arose and new opportunities of networking were initiated. Selected presentations of the Conference are published in this issue of Clinical Microcirculation and Hemorheology.

We wish to thank all participants and speakers for this fantastic conference.