Around the clock and throughout the world, the EAPCI is increasingly present; our Association is dynamic, organising or participating in a variety of activities, all with an emphasis on collaboration, education and innovation. January saw the respected AsiaPCR/SingLIVE followed in February by the exciting Resistant Hypertension Course (RHC) in Berlin, Germany. The RHC is the first joint meeting organised by the EAPCI, The European Society of Hypertension (ESH), the ESC Working Group on “Hypertension and the Heart” and PCR. The RHC is typical of our association’s commitment to education, answering to the need of our members to be aware of what is happening at the frontline of technology and practice.
Over the next few months, the EAPCI will be participating in a wide range of programmes. For now, let us take a look ahead and see what the EAPCI will be involved in through May and our meeting, EuroPCR. Later this year, in our June edition, we will introduce you to our equally exciting activities taking place from the late spring through the end of the year.
Late winter to early spring
March 1-2 will see the “Stent for Life Forum 2013” (SFL FORUM) in Prague, Czech Republic. The SFL FORUM is the annual meeting of the SFL Initative, a project of the EAPCI. This forum will be chaired by myself and Petr Kala and will be the ideal moment to discuss and further the goals of the Stent for Life Initiative (www.stentforlife.com).
Besides its own endorsed courses, the EAPCI cooperates with meetings which impact on the practice and advancement of our speciality. On the 21st of March, we will be hosting a joint EAPCI/EuroPCR session in Beijing, China at Run-Lin Gao’s 2013 China Interventional Therapeutics (CIT) meeting. From the 12th to the 14th of April we will be holding EAPCI/EuroPCR sessions in Kolkata, at the National Interventional Council (NIC) 2013 meeting chaired by Sundeep Mishra; the NIC is a part of the Cardiological Society of India. A few days later, the EAPCI returns to Europe for the Warsaw Course on Cardiovascular Interventions (WCCI). This is the official conference of the Association on Cardiovascular Interventions of the Polish Cardiac Society, organised by Adam Witkowski; we will be hosting an “EAPCI/EuroPCR@WCCI 2013” on Thursday, April 18th.
May
The beginning of May 2013 will see our annual EAPCI Summit taking place from the 2nd to the 3rd of May at the European Heart House, Sophia Antipolis, France. Last year the summit focused on education and the new emerging eLearning Platform. This year we will focus on the question “How to address current challenges faced by the young interventional cardiologists”.
The EAPCI Summit brings together the presidents and chairs of the almost 50 different national interventional Working Groups of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), and this year we have invited them to each bring a young fellow from their country or group. The presence of these young interventionalists and fellows will ensure the diversity of experience that is necessary to fully confront the vital question we wish to address. We will touch on four points: education and training; access to clinical research; networking: between the young interventionalists themselves and between them and important centres for interventional practice; and finally “the future”, their future and ours as they evolve as professionals and specialists.
No discussion of the EAPCI can be complete without mentioning EuroPCR, our annual meeting, which we will speak about in more detail in an upcoming edition of EuroIntervention. EuroPCR 2013 will take place in Paris May 21-24, placing the accent on our three key ideas education, information and innovation. There will be four major themes: “coronary interventions”, “interventions for structural heart disease”, “endovascular interventions” and “interventions for refractory hypertension and heart failure”.
Throughout the year, the commitment of the EAPCI to the free exchange of information and practice, to innovation in education and to ensuring a clear approach to new and cutting-edge techniques will be seen in the variety programmes that we endorse or participate in. We do this together with the other members of the PCR family; for instance, the PCR seminars, which occur throughout the year and are a collaborative effort of the EAPCI and EuroPCR dedicated to education and training. Active, open and dedicated to the advancement of the practice of interventional medicine, the EAPCI is present throughout the world at the different venues that mean the most to our members.
