NEWSLETTER
November 2003
Letter from the President
Dear Colleagues,
The recent joint EACTS and ESTS Annual Meeting in Vienna was a great success, with a record attendance of 3338 physicians registered. This was certainly different from the first meeting in 1987 when the 489 attendees fitted into the Hofburg Palace. Our Association has come a long way during that time and although many people have contributed to the success of EACTS, I would like to especially thank the two Secretary Generals, Marko Turina, who has now left the Council for the first time since the inception of EACTS, and Torkel Aberg who has been Secretary General for the last 12 years and has now become Vice-President. I also very much welcome Bruce Keogh who takes over the difficult job of Secretary General, he has a hard act to follow.
I would like to pay tribute to my predecessor, Walter Klepetko, who has done so much for the Association in the last year and as a thoracic surgeon, has been particularly involved with the integration of the ESTS into the meeting.
The organisation of the meeting was excellent and our thanks go to the Local Organising Committee Chairman, Werner Mohl and Michael Muller and their team. I would also like to particularly thank the members of our staff, led by Maud Zingmark and Kathy McGree, who put an enormous effort into the smooth running of this large meeting.
Vienna is a beautiful city and the social programme lived up to it. The wonderful concert of Mozart's Requiem in St Stephan's Cathedral had standing room only and the President's Dinner in the Town Hall with 900 people sitting down to dinner in that wonderful room will be long remembered.
However, the main purpose of the Annual Meeting is the Scientific Programme and this year it was again of a very high standard. More than 1500 abstracts were submitted and 324 papers presented. Our thanks go to the Programme Committee for the unenviable task of sifting through so many abstracts and producing such a good programme. I would also like to thank the chairmen of sessions, so much depends on them as well as the audience to stimulate good discussions. The interactive sessions continue to be popular and promote good discussion. Presenters should not feel that having a paper accepted for an interactive session is inferior to presenting an oral session paper. Choosing which type of session an abstract goes to is usually decided on how good a discussion it is likely to promote, and there is a definite technique for getting the best out of this type of session. EACTS has pioneered the interactive sessions and others have followed, it is certainly far better than the old poster system.
Times are changing and with the dramatic increase in the use of drug eluting stents by our cardiology colleagues, the number of operations for coronary artery surgery has fallen over the last few years. This causes concern about particularly the workload of adult cardiac surgeons, and the Council is organising a Symposium for the Future to try and determine our best strategy. In addition to this a new venture was organised in Vienna. Under the Chairmanship of Walter Klepetko there was a meeting with the European National Societies. This was attended by the Presidents of many National Societies and hopefully this will help to bring the European countries together in a coordinated effort to improve communication, teaching and audit of results. In this respect it is prudent to remind everyone of the following;
Communication
The CTSNet is a fantastic organisation which now has more than 20,000 cardiothoracic surgeons listed on it. I would please ask everyone to put their details on it, particularly with their e-mail address and preferably photo. I find it so helpful when trying to get in touch with colleagues.
Teaching
The European School for Cardio-thoracic Surgery which opened in Bergamo earlier this year runs courses for both cardiac and thoracic surgery. These are aimed at young surgeons preparing for the Board examinations. A lot of effort has gone into setting it up, and our support is needed. So please encourage junior surgeons to go on these courses. The excellent syllabus and programme can be found on www.eacts.org/doc/6898 and the cost has recently been reduced.
The Multi-Media Manual of Cardiothoracic Surgery which is being prepared under the guidance of Marko Turina, should be ready by next September and will be a wonderful teaching tool available to everyone.
Audit of Results
We must know the outcomes of our surgery and continually try to improve the standards. The European Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery Institute of Accreditation (ECTSIA) being introduced by Sam Nashef will help to achieve this and we should support it.
Also the European Cardiac Surgery Database, which has been started by Bruce Keogh, will collect initially the numbers of patients undergoing surgery, together with much useful data allowing comparisons between countries. Hopefully in due course the outcomes will be added.
The Congenital Cardiac Database organised by Bohdan Maruszewski in Warsaw has already collected over 14,000 patients with their early mortality. Great strides are being made in risk stratification, though more work needs to be done with validation and getting all units to send complete data.
We must all cooperate and have accurate records of our surgery with its outcome if we are to do the best for our patients and stay one jump ahead of the politicians who will demand this information in due course anyway.
The European Journal of Cardio-Thoracic Surgery continues to thrive under the guidance of Ludwig von Segesser and his team. The newly introduced Interactive Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery is a success and going from strength to strength. More about this in the Editor's report, and thanks to them for such professional journals.
I would like to thank on all our behalf the many people on committees and particularly their chairmen, who put so much into the running of our Association. We are always looking for more motivated people to join them and anyone interested should contact Bruce Keogh or myself.
This Association needs participation by all its members, and I am always pleased to have new ideas, suggestions etc. Although the General Assembly tends to be a fairly stereotyped series of reports and elections, we can also discuss matters that members feel should be aired (preferably with prior warning).
The next Annual Meeting will again be a joint EACTS and ESTS get together in Leipzig. It is a significant time when more Eastern European countries are welcomed into the European Union and I hope that the location will encourage even more people from the East to come. Leipzig is a beautiful city and it promises to be yet another excellent meeting. I hope to see as many of you as possible there next September.
James Monro, FRCS, FETCS
President of EACTS
