NEWSLETTER
December 2004
Letter from the President
Dear friends
Quite some time has passed since the Joint Meeting in Leipzig. It stays bright in our memories as a most successful meeting. For my own part, it was the first time in the town of Bach and Mendelsohn. I have heard many good remarks about the scientific programme, the Techno-College, the postgraduate courses, the anatomical exhibition, the industrial exhibition and all the other features of our developing Annual Meeting. So thank you, Friedrich Mohr and Richard Achatzy for all your work. It made the visit to Leipzig a memorable one! And thank you all you outstanding people of our staff who help us arranging the Annual Meeting so successfully! And thank you, Jim Monro for your Presidential year!
During the General Assembly, much information was given about the development of EACTS and our sister organisation, the ESTS. Please read the minutes in order to update yourself!
During and after the Joint Meeting Council has been busy. We are further developing our relationship with the ESTS, we work at refining the Annual Meeting, we strengthen the long-term survival of EACTS by investing parts of our financial assets according to the rules of the UK Charity Commission and we try to foresee and prepare us for the future. We have also decided to go on our own as regards the Interactive CardioVascular and Thoracic Journal and publish that journal ourselves now. This was possible by the competence and decisiveness of our Editor-in-Chief and Managing Editor.
Here in the northern part of Sweden, we have now entered the proper winter period. There is about four centimetres of snow and we have had some bitterly cold nights of minus 17 centigrades. On clear nights, the aurora borealis has cast its eerie lights. These are conditions that remind you that Nature has teeth to bite with and that sometimes we dwell near the limit for human survival. If you are not cautious, death may be the result.
These are also the conditions for our patients. Daily, we take them to the limit of human endurance in order to remodel their innards so that their hearts and lungs may function some years longer and give life and joy to their owners and relatives. And sometimes things go wrong.
I feel that this award fulfils several purposes. Firstly, it completes the series of Young Investigator’s Awards as it now includes adult cardiac, thoracic, congenital and transplantation. Secondly, it reminds us that there are dangers for our patients and for ourselves; thirdly, this prestigious award hopefully will inspire young researchers to continue reaching for the sky and fourthly, and perhaps most importantly, it makes us think.
Torkel Åberg, MD, FETCS
President
