NEWSLETTER

July 1997

Dear Friends

I hope that everything is well with you and that you will feel even better after your summer holidays, enjoy them!

In this age of rapid changes, also cardio-thoracic surgery and the EACTS is changing. I will give you a short summary of what has happened within the association during this year and what will happen in Copenhagenand later this year. More details will follow.

The Annual Meeting in Copenhagen 28 September - 1 October will keep the format that was so successful in Prague. A fourth postgraduate course, on perfusion, has been added. This year, there will be the specific Danish flavour added to the Annual Meeting! Do not miss this occasion.

The number of abstracts for the Programme Committee to review this year was 685. The Annual Meeting will accommodate 204 of them, an outstanding summary of European and international research. Do not miss this occasion.

In celebration of the 20th anniversary of the St. Jude valve, the Company has put at the disposal of the EACTS a Lillehei Award, being offered to a young investigator with the best valve paper given at the Annual Meeting. It will be added to our own Young Investigators's Award. Do not miss this occasion.

The exhibition of the EACTS Annual Meeting is growing each year. We have on order 1280 sq.m. exhibition space, compared with a total of 1098 sq.m. in Prague. Do not miss this occasion.

On Saturday 27 September several pre-meeting symposia are arranged by the Industry. Thus there are four and a half days of current views and new information within your own field as well as basic education for your pupils. Do not miss this occasion.

The number of new members this year is 94. The Association is growing rapidly. However, there are many surgeons in Europe who are not yet members. Please help in recruiting them into the Association so that it becomes even more representative!

The European Board of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgeons will give its first examinations, Saturday 27 September in Wroclaw, Poland and Copenhagen, Denmark. See below.

The European Board of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgeons offers Fellowships according to a "Grandfather Clause",which means that any surgeon of experience can apply for the Fellowship and add the letters FETCS to your name.

The EACTS Homepage (Eacts.org) in our new, versatile Internet environment is getting integrated with other international societies. It promises to become the major quick information spreading medium. See below.

The financial result of the Prague Meeting was good, giving the EACTS the possibilities to further assist in the development of cardio-thoracic surgery in Europe. The financial result of the Association itself was also satisfactory, in spite of the extra expense in conjunction with the change of publishers.

Our Journal has - after the change to Elsevier- become a larger and better Journal. I hope you enjoy it!

The East European Committee has had a busy year with several fellowships being granted and fulfilled.

The Committee Structure of the Association as outlined during the General Assembly in Prague is being finalised. There will be a "Symposium for the Future" to which all Committee members are invited in order to discuss the general goals of the Association, to divide tasks among the Committees and to give each Committee a working goal for the next few years.

The EACTS was, via the Database Committee given a grant by the EU as announced during the General Assembly in Prague. We are extremely fortunate to have been able to engage as the Project Manager Dr Richard Wyse. Dr Wyse has already been in contact with many of you and is busy setting up the cardiac registry project to be demonstrated in Copenhagen. A thoracic registry is also on its way.

At a joint meeting with the AATS it was decided to try to establish an educational exchange programme between the US and Europe. If you have clinical or research fellowships or other positions that you could make available for this exchange programme, please let me know.

Finally, the Management Course in Mallorca 23-25 November is being finalised. We feel that education in the broad subject of management is necessary for anyone running, or preparing himself to run, at cardio-thoracic unit. This course is not any management course but is directed only to cardio thoracic surgeons. It is geared to cardio-thoracic problems and has as one goal to provide the course attendants with ideas that would enable them to improve on their total quality and lower the costs per operation by 5-10 per cent. Furthermore, statistics from the European scene will be given so that you can talk with your administrators and politicians with a good knowledge background also as regards managerial matters.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the friends in the Council and the Committees for a job well done, for all the time you have devoted to the Association and especially for all the nice moments we have had together. It is a true pleasure working with you!

11th Annual Meeting of the EACTS

Scientific Programme

For the first time this year we will have a Postgraduate Course on Cardiovascular Perfusion. The course will be divided into a morning session entitled "Origins of Modern Cardiopulmonary Bypass", and an afternoon session with the topic "Current Issues in Cardiopulmonary Bypass". The full programme of the Course on Perfusion will be announced in the July issue of the European Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery. Simultaneously there will be Postgraduate Courses on Adult Cardiac Surgery entitled "Treatment of Endocarditis", on Congenital Heart Surgery enlightening issues within "Tetralogy of Fallot and Single Ventricle", and the fourth Postgraduate Course on Thoracic Surgery will take up "Optimal Management of Lung Cancer". All four Course Programmes are included on the EACTShomepage, please visit http://www.eacts.org.

Ernst Wolner will in his Presidential Address talk about an issue for which he cares a lot, "Research in Cardio-Thoracic Surgery - A European Challenge". The Honoured Guest will be Alain Carpentier who arouses our interest and curiosity by entitling his speech "Transfer of Knowledge". Another interesting lecture will be given by Andew Wechsler, Virgina, USA, in his Basic Science Lecture "Molecular Biology for the Cardio-Thoracic Surgeon".

The first winner of the Francis Fontan Prize, Dr Francesco Tritto, will report on his experiences during one year's stay at Hospital Vall d'Hebron in Barcelona.

Registration for the Annual Meeting isnecessary for all participants. Even if you act as a speaker, chairman or presenter, please complete a registration form. If you lack forms for registration or hotel reservations, The Executive Secretariat will be happy to send these forms to you.

General Information

European Board of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgeons

With this Newsletter you receive an announcement for the examinations which will take place in September:

Thoracic examination: Saturday 27 September 1997 in Wroclaw

Cardiovascular examination: Saturday 27 September 1997 in Copenhagen

Application formsand general information regarding the Examinations are attached. We would like you to spread information about the Board and to make use of the "grandfather clause". The Association is working at having all members join the European Board and we appreciate your co-operation in this matter.

Deadline for applications: Friday 15 August 1997

East European Committee

In our last Newsletter we asked if any of you would be willing to spend a short time teaching and operating in centres in any of the Eastern European countries, and I am very grateful to the ones who have sent in their letters of interest. However, it seems as if the programme of the East European Committee is not fully known as there are very few hospitals in Eastern Europe who have contacted us to let us know that they would be willing to host Western surgeons. I therefore repeat the rules of the Committee decided by the Council:

"The Association will support several on-site visits of highly experienced surgeons to centres of cardio-thoracic surgery in Eastern European countries with the aim of improving the knowledge and art of certain advanced procedures in cardio-thoracicsurgery. Such visits will be limited to one week and should include seminars, rounds and, if desired, active participation in the operating room. The costs of travel will be carried by the EACTS while all other expenses are in the obligation of the hosts. Institutions interested in this programme are asked to write to the Secretary of the EACTS stating the special fields of interest in question and the most appropriate time period(s) envisaged for the visit."

During the current year two visits to East European centres were supported by the EACTS. M. Bugge and V. Lepore of Gothenburg joined the team of Prof. G. Barbarash in Kemerovo, located in the Kuzbass industrial region of Siberia, while H.G. Borst went to see G. Knychov's large service in Kiev. In either case, a tremendous need for advanced training of all kinds of personnel was noted as was a grotesque lack of apparatus including disposable equipment. Many patients have to buy their angio-films, oxygenators and valves. Admirably, Mogens Bugge was able to collect 7 (!) tons of outclassed autoclaves, respirators, monitors and laundry as well as disposables and books which were trucked to Siberia.

Presently one young surgeon from each of these centres works as EACTS-Fellows in Western Europe. A 5-year close co-operation between Gothenburg and Kemerovo presently is paraphrased and a similar endeavour is being planned for Kiev. Any of our members wishing to share in this activity are kindly asked to contact Hans Borst.

Additional fellowships have been awarded to promising surgeons in the East to spend some time in western clinics. To date 16 applicants have been supported by the EACTS and by the Johnson & Johnson Philantropic Fund, named "Ethicon Fellowships of the EACTS". Since we sent out the Newsletter in January two more surgeons have been granted "Ethicon Fellowships" for 6 months training periods: Dr. S Kayser from Budapest and Dr. M Kostolny from Bratislava.

Funds have been received by Sulzer International and Sulzer Carbomedics for further grants to be awarded for this year and for 1998. The Committee is evaluating the applications and will inform about its decision in the next Newsletter.

EACTS Homepage http://www.eacts.org

The EACTS is very proud and happy to announce that it has joined CTSnet. CTSnet is a communications network that will revolutionise the communication within our organisation and between cardio-thoracic organisations. CTSnet was launched last year by the STS under the initiative of Bob Replogle. The basic idea is to share, using the internet, a common knowledge and organisational database. This database is physically stored on a large server in Baltimore.

The EACTS Homepage has been reconstructed in this new environment. You are invited to visitthis at http://www.eacts.org . You will find all the information about the EACTS. This will improve the transparency of the organisation since each committee has now public pages. Private pages for each committee will reduce travelling costs in time and money. Members can forward in an automatic and structured form messages to committees. Most major national and international cardio-thoracic associations have or are becoming members of this network. If Your national cardio-thoracic has not yet joined, please have them contact Paul.Sergeant@uz.kuleuven.ac.be.

The united database will facilitate communication between similar committees from different organisations. All members are hereby invited to correctand complete your personal information. Your userid is the first initial of your first name, attached to your family name (e.g. taberg for Torkel Aberg), your password is a 6 digit number printed on a separate letter with this mailing. This new environment opens a lot of new opportunities as there are personal to organisational communication but also virtual congresses, discussion groups etc. The EACTS plans to use the internet as a tool and not as a toy, so get connected to the net.

Video Library

There will be a video Library in Copenhagen and we are trying to collect as many videos as we can in order to offer a wide choice of subjects. Do you have any interesting video/videos we would appreciate it very much if you are willing to lend or give them to us. Please send your video marked with your name and EACTS 97 to the Executive Secretariat at the address on the top front page. The videos should preferably be VHS and on the PAL system, but other formats and systems like U-matic, Secam or NTSC are also accepted. Thanks in advance for your contribution.

New Membership Applications

I am happy to announce that 94 of our colleagues around the world have applied for membership of the Association. The list of the applicants who have been going through the admission process by the Membership Committee is attached.

Wishing you a relaxing and very nice summer!

Torkel Aberg
Secretary General EACTS
Heart Centre, University Hospital
S-901 85 UmeÂ, Sweden
Phone +46 90 785 36 76
Fax +46 90 785 36 01
E-mail eacts.secretary@mailbox.calypso.net