Dear Colleagues & Friends,

It is our pleasure to welcome you all to EUS Summit 2019, which will be held from October 5^th to 6^th in Asan Medical Center, Seoul, Korea. This meeting is organized jointly by World Endoscopy Organization (WEO) and Korean Society of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy (KSGE), and Asian EUS Korea. We already finished successful 1^st workshop for basic EUS anatomy and EUS-guided fine needle aspiration (EUS-FNA) at June, 2019. This time, we would like to open EUS Summit 2019 as a 2^nd step workshop focusing on EUS-guided intervention and advanced diagnostic EUS technology.

Now EUS field is rapidly expanding from basic diagnostic EUS to therapeutic EUS. EUS-guided pseudocyst drainage was the starting point of EUS-guided intervention. These days, many EUS-guided interventional procedures are performed actively including EUS-guided pancreatobiliary drainage and EUS-guided ablation therapy. In addition, Contrast-enhanced EUS (CE-EUS) have been expanded to many diseases. The various applications of CE-EUS include the differentiation of benign from malignant lesions of the pancreas, GB, lymph nodes, and other gastrointestinal lesions. Many Asian centers are leading this field. We believe it is timely and important for many trainees and EUS experts to get together and share their experiences.

The program of EUS Summit 2019 is composed of didactic lectures covering most of recent updates of EUS guided interventional techniques and hands-on courses of interventional EUS. This will be a festival for the leaders of EUS in Asian countries and a good learning place for the trainee of EUS. Korea has four distinctive seasons and autumn is the best season for travelling and sightseeing. We hope that all participants enjoy not only academic meeting but also experiencing the traditional and modern culture of Korea.
The conference will be a valuable and inspiring experience for everyone.

Thank you very much.