DAILY NEWS SCIENTIFIC PROGRAMME
HIGHLIGHTS FROM FRIDAY
The official newspaper of the 36th EACTS Annual Meeting 2022
Issue 3 Saturday 8 October
CELEBRATING EXCELLENCE EACTS Awards
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FRANCA MELFI IS THE FIRST WOMAN TO BE VICE PRESIDENT. PAGE 5
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A SUCCESSFUL ANNUAL MEETING NURSES AND ALLIED HEALTH GROUP AT THE ANNUAL MEETING Creating a platform for high quality research and collaboration by nurses and other healthcare professionals in cardiac surgery Page 19
EACTS MEMBERSHIP Welcoming hundreds of new members to EACTS Page 27
Patrick Myers EACTS Secretary General As the new Secretary General of EACTS I would like to thank all of you for being part of this year’s successful Annual Meeting. With your support the EACTS Annual Meeting continues to be not just the largest event for the cardiothoracic community, but also an opportunity for us all to come together, share, discuss and learn. EACTS has its roots in Europe, but I’m delighted that members and speakers from all over the world as well as from other specialities and professions have joined us in Milan. As cardiothoracic surgeons, we work in multi-disciplinary teams, and I’m so pleased that our Domains and Task Forces truly embraced the importance of multi-disciplinary approaches when they prepared the huge scientific programme on offer here. Cutting-edge science It has been fantastic to hear from global leaders in their field and learn more about the cutting-edge science that we can implement in our practice. In yesterday’s Late Breaking Clinical Trials session, we were privileged to have high quality presentations, including the results of a prospective
randomised controlled trial. I encourage everyone to attend today’s Late Breaking Clinical Trials session at 12:15, which is an opportunity to hear the preliminary results of a first in human trial which could improve coronary artery bypass grafting. New initiatives to support our members I am extremely humbled to be the new EACTS Secretary General. As a longstanding member of the organisation, past secretary of the EBCTS and Chair of the Acquired Cardiac Disease Domain, I know first-hand the influence that EACTS has through our publications, Academy programme, clinical practice guidelines, examinations and the many other facets of work. I want to build on these achievements and explore new ways to deliver value to our members whilst continuing to equip the cardiothoracic community with everything we need to improve outcomes for our patients. A stronger surgical voice Assessing the very latest clinical data and evidence in order to develop high quality clinical guidelines on specific procedures and techniques is an important part of our efforts to drive quality improvement in cardiothoracic surgery. However, we need to strengthen the surgical voice by taking a more active and earlier role in how the evidence is developed.
At this Annual Meeting we have been able to learn from experts running clinical trials and, given the numbers of submissions we received, we are able to hold two late breaking clinical trials sessions as well. These sessions encourage us all to assess and critically appraise the evidence available to us.
“Assessing the very latest clinical data and evidence in order to develop high quality clinical guidelines on specific procedures and techniques is an important part of our efforts to drive quality improvement in cardiothoracic surgery.” Running a clinical trial is a full-time job which requires specific expertise. We want to put the infrastructure in place to support more members gain the necessary skills and knowledge to design and run the clinical trials that will lead to surgical teams delivering even better outcomes for our patients. Other professions do this well and I am keen we do more to support in this area. As such, we are working with the University College London
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