THE EUROPEAN ASSOCIATION FOR CARDIO-THORACIC SURGERY

Minutes of a meeting of Presidents and Secretaries of European National Societies in Cardiac, Cardio-Thoracic, Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, 12 September 2006, Stockholm, Sweden.

In attendance:

Welcome and EACTS and CTSNet presence at national meetings, Siegfried Hagl

EACTS president welcomed the attendees of the meeting and was happy to see so many representatives of national societies attend this short lunch gathering. EACTS is the contact for national societies and we are most willing to assist in spreading information on your national events.  Please send your meeting details to Maud Zingmark (Secretary@eacts.norrnod.se) and she will announce your meeting in the European Journal of Cardio-Thoracic Surgery, EJCTS, and in the Event’s section of CTSNet. She has attended quite a few of the national society meetings as an EACTS and CTSNet ambassador. Would you like her to participate in your meeting, kindly let her know and she will do so depending on her schedule.

European School for Cardio-Thoracic Surgery, Bergamo, Pieter Kappetein

Progress and plans                                                                               

The European School for CardioThoracic Surgery organises three courses in thoracic and cardiac surgery each year. The courses are divided into 3 levels. It is not necessary to take the courses in level order. Programme coordinators are Walter Klepetko for thoracic topics, Jarda Stark for congenital and Pieter Kappetein for thoracic subjects.

Courses run Monday - Friday 8.30 until about 17.00 from March until November. Wednesday afternoon is free for studies or alternative activities. The course ends on Saturday midday. Certificates of attendance are provided and CME credits are available. Course dates for 2007 will soon be advertised on EACTS website www.eacts.org.

Upon question from some national representative as regards Co-operation with ESTS as regards the School, Pieter Kappetein explained that the School is organized by EACTS. The financial risk is entirely on EACTS. Any interested surgeon is welcome to attend regardless of which society he/she belongs.  EACTS represents cardiac and thoracic surgery.  In spite of the fact that a decision is taken not to organize any EACTS/ESTS Joint Annual Meeting for the time beeing, there will be no change in the School programmes as they are under the responsibility of EACTS.

Pieter Kappetein also announced that the Association wants to give the students the highest level of teaching possible. He therefore urged the national societies to send names of good speakers who would be willing to take part in the School. It should be added that course participants find the course weeks very interesting. They appreciate the interaction with teachers and the informal and nice atmosphere at the School. Teachers also find the teaching very stimulating and nice.  Please send student to take part in this excellent training. Already 550 students have participated in the 25 courses which have been organized so far.

Some national societies give grants to promising surgeons. Pieter Kappetein suggested that national societies to spend these grants on training at the European School.

For any questions or suggestions on the School in Bergamo please contact Pieter Kappetein.

EACTS Journals and their developments, Ian Beecroft on behalf of Ludwig von Segesser

The European Journal of CardioThoracic Surgery, EJCTS, continues its successful trend in becoming one of the most popular journals in the world in this specialty.  Yearly statistics show that submissions of a total of 1778, pages published 3500. Contributions to the growth is coming from all over the world.  Quality control is very strict which means impact factor has increased. EJCTS is a great international forum.

Interactive and Cardiovasular and Thoracic, ICVTS is an online open-access journal. Also Multimedia Manual of CardioThoracic Surgery, MMCTS, is open access.

EJCTS is currently published in cooperation with Elsevier, but EACTS now negotiating re. buying EJCTS. As part of our negotiations with Elsevier we have a much better price for EJCTS. In 2007 EACTS will be offering reduced price or complimentary trial subscriptions to national societies (particularly trainees). Those interested should contact Ian Beecroft

Technical developments and new initiatives in CTSNet, Peter Greene

EACTS is one of the founders of CTSNet (Cardiothoracic Surgery Network) together with STS and AATS. This year website celebrates its 10^th year since creation.  More than 28,000 surgeons are members of the network, 46 professional societies participate in this website uniting surgeons worldwide.  The five major cardiothoracic international journals as are online as well as the MMCTS (Multimedia Manual of Cardio-thoracic Surgery).

Among the new features developed this year is Online CME, a new search engine, google search has been introduced and the e-Learning management system.

For national societies participating in CTSNet a convenient tool in the Committee pages is available. You can erect committees for specific purposes and list their members, post documents and files as regards your society for public or private access. Then communication within the committee is conveniently done without searching for email addresses. These Committee pages also serve as an archive in a central, secure place. This is particularly valuable to societies where turnover of officers and/or webmasters is frequent.  CTSNet also offers a convenient way for communication with your members. By clicking just one button you can circulate messages to all your members. If your society is interested to learn more about CTS, please contact Carol Blasberg at blasbergc@wudosis.wustl.edu. The presentation by Peter Greene is available here.

Databases in Cardiac and Thoracic Surgery.

Follow up of progress and plans, Bruce Keogh and Peter Walton

We are trying to develop a thoracic database with ESTS, which is leading this project. The contribution to this database will continue unchanged also during future years in spite of the fact that the two societies have decided not to have joint meetings.

We have more results to show in the cardiac database which is run by EACTS in partnership with Dendrite. The presentation is available here. 

Thank you in advance for contributing to the growth of the cardiac database.

Congenital Database, Pascal Vouhé

The EACTS Congenital Database
There is an EACTS Congenital Database which is located and managed, in a strictly anonymous way, in Warsaw, Poland.

More than 30,000 patients (more than 35,000 procedures) have been included to date. 183 centres, from 55 countries, are currently registered. A procedure of validation and verification has been developed. More information is available at www.eactscongenitaldb.org.

However, only 40 centres are really active and approximately only 20 % of the overall European activity of paediatric cardiac surgery is reported. There is, therefore, a need to increase the completeness of data reporting, in order to improve the validity of the database.

The need for National Databases
In one European country (United Kingdom), the participation of paediatric cardiac surgery centres to a national database is compulsory.

In most other European countries, there is a growing pressure to establish such databases. This pressure is coming from health authorities, parental associations, medias ...

I believe that it is essential that professionals, and particularly, professional associations such as national societies, are responsible for the management of such databases.

Using the EACTS Congenital Database to provide National Databases
A system is being established in some European countries (Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Poland, Spain):

1. all paediatric centres report their data to the EACTS Congenital Database (each centre can then compare its activity with that of the other European centres)

2. the EACTS Congenital Database provides national reports to the National Society. This national report remains anonymous (which may be relative in countries with few centres) and can be used by the national society as it pleases.

Prof. Vouhé believes that such cooperation should be established in all European countries under the control of the National Societies. The Presidents and Secretaries of all National Societies will be contacted in the near future.

SSCVS Contact:

• SSCVS e-mail address: info@srscvs.org

• SSCVS Phone-fax: +381 (11) 361 0880