MAY 2008

Dear BACTS member,

It is with pleasure that we write you to keep you updated concerning ongoing activities in the society.

Early this year the Board has put emphasis on analyzing the strength and weaknesses of our annual scientific meeting based on reviewing data from 2001 on.

For those members who have been present in November 2007 in Brussels, it has probably been very clear that the number of participants had dropped. We indeed had 89 participants overall , which represents more or less a 20% decrease from previous years.

Being a scientific society that represents the cardiac and thoracic surgical community in Belgium, the only annual scientific event that is set to gather its members together is of utmost importance.

Indeed, the goal of the annual meeting should be to attract almost all BACTS members as well as people being involved in the care of cardio-vascular and thoracic patients at large. This meeting should both pursue a social goal (gathering with colleagues) as well as a scientific goal.

As for any congress, the scientific level will always depend on the quality and the numbers of abstracts submitted to the Scientific Committee.

It appeared clear to all members of the Board that actions should be taken to further improve and provide a new impetus to this event:

From 2008 on, the Scientific Committee will propose two additional forms of scientific communications

• Selected Video presentation that would describe innovative techniques, cases of special interest to the whole community, techniques and tricks that should be in the armamentarium of any cardio-thoracic surgeon to deal with perioperative unexpected events,…
• Poster presentation for the submitted work that would not have been selected for oral presentation

Secondly, the Scientific Committee re-emphasized that submissions of important scientific work and/or contributions that would have been already presented at international meeting(s) but not being published yet in a peer-review journal should be encouraged by leading centers, and/or surgeons and/or physicians.

We believe that those changes might benefit both in-training resident sharing our enthusiasm in the cardio-thoracic surgical field and senior surgeons, with established scientific background when participating in this annual event.

Again, a scientific meeting, and more importantly, a scientific society can not survive on its own without the full participation of each of its individuals and /or members.

Another aspect that I would have like to share with you in this 1st quarter newsletter is regarding the subtle intertwining between database commitments to encoding and reporting on one side, and on the other side incoming studies initiated either by the College of cardiac surgery or the Database committee.

As many of you might know, partial financing of the society (and its database) was granted by government authorities as part of an agreement from the College of cardiac surgery to provide annual data report as well as specific study results on topic that deal with quality of care in its broadest aspect.

The College of Cardiac Surgery has to define its project in the beginning of the year, to fulfill the requirements of the government to continue with the financing. Several studies were performed:

• For 2006 the VAD registry report (available on the website) and the Database report concerning 2003 and 2004 cardiac surgery activity were chosen. Subsequent meetings with the Technical Council on assist devices resulted in an augmentation of the annual number of VAD’s to be used as Bridge to Transplant from 20 to 30. Furthermore, on February 11th a Royal Decree was published which extends the use of devices in acute cardiogenic shock, previously restricted to post-cardiotomy failure.
• For 2007 the survey on ‘quality indicators’ (Results will be presented on May 3rd 2008 at the 9th Belgian Surgical Week-BACTS section) and the Database report on 2005 activity were chosen.
• For 2008, a project concerning arterial revascularisation will be entered together with the 2006 Database report. Since “the use of at least one arterial graft” was cited by the majority of surgeons as being an important quality indicator, this item was chosen for further study. The College will draft a new voluntary survey to all active cardiac surgeons to probe on their use of arterial grafts. Together with data from the Database Committee, this will give a nice overview of current practice in Belgium

Since data collection is in the hands of the Database Committee, they are preparing further studies, which can be used in a later state by the College as the project for upcoming years. Please be aware that all the projects and results are presented at the Board before publication.

• The Board has mandated the Database Committee to perform a prospective study on aortic dissection. This prospective registry could be a useful project for 2009. The Database Committee is preparing data sheets, in order to provide surgeons with the possibility of registration of all patients treated for aortic dissection within one year, with follow-up data at one year. We strongly encourage everybody to participate.
  We hope that this clarifies the mailing that most of you have probably received in the past months and coming from the Database Committee.
• In the mean time, the Database Committee is working on a voluntary registry of risk adjusted mortality with a 90-day follow-up. Last year, a small pilot multicentric study was presented in Ostende, revealing a 2,3% 30-day mortality for all coronary bypass surgery (elective, urgent and reanimation) in the 4 participating centers. Obviously, such type of studies can be very important to support our profession in comparison to our colleague form the cardiology community.
• With all the activities in percutaneous valve techniques, a further extension of the registration for aortic valve replacement is currently under preparation within the Database Committee.

Finally, I would encourage all of you to spent a few minutes on the BACTS/CTSnet private webpage to verify the appropriateness of the available information on your background, field of interests, society membership and so forth.

You will find enclosed the current overview of both the Committee Rosters and the Membership Directory. This Directory is continuously updated. Please check your personal data and inform us in case they need correction.
New candidate members are invited to send their application form to
Frank Van Praet,
Chairman Membership Committee BACTS,
Department of Cardiovascular & Thoracic Surgery,
OLV Ziekenhuis, Moorselbaan 164, 9300 Aalst.

Applicants should use the official BACTS form available online and included.
The deadline for receipt of new applications is fixed on September 1, 2007.

13th Congress on Cardio-Thoracic Surgery

The 13th annual congress of the BACTS will take place at the Sodehotel-Woluwe on Saturday November 15th, 2008.

Abstracts for this year’s Congress are already welcome. As discussed earlier in the introduction of this April 2008 Newsletter, the Scientific committee and the Board have both agreed on extending the presentation format to  short video presentation and simultaneously to poster presentation for the abstract not selected for the oral session.
The deadline for receipt of abstracts is fixed on Friday July 18th 2008.
Abstract submission should be done through the website.

Selected Abstract presenters will be informed by September 15th 2008.

Abstract prize and travel grants

1. Prize for the best abstract presented at the BACTS meeting (1000 Euro)

Abstracts are anonymously scored by the members of the scientific committee. The prize is given to the abstract with the highest score (allocated before the meeting).
The prize is a 1000 Euro prize.

2. Travel grant (5000 Euro)

For Belgian cardiothoracic residents or young surgeons
To spend 2 months in prestigious centers for cardio-thoracic surgery
(proposal by the candidate)
Application for such a travel grant should be addressed to the scientific committee (before September 2008). The application should consist of

• curriculum vitae
• a short letter explaining the goal of the training by the chairman of the department
• a short proposal concerning the intended centers to visit.

3. Funding of a fellow to attend either the Bergamo school (Cardiac/Thoracic) or the ESTS School (Thoracic). One fellowship support for each subspecialty (Two grants of approximately 900 Euro)
Application for this support should be addressed to the scientific committee. The application should consist of

• curriculum vitae of the candidate
• a short letter of the chairman of the department to support the application.

In case several applications are made, the scientific committee will give priority to the candidate with the better curriculum.
Note: The scientific committee is reached via the chairman:
Dr. A Poncelet.
Chairman scientific committee BACTS
Department Cardiothoracic Surgery.
Avenue Hippocrate 10,
Brussels 1200.

Bylaws

Finally, our new bylaws are published after approval on the special General Assembly in December 2006. Please take a look at the website www.bacts.org/sections/bylaws/index.html
The Board is currently working on the “internal rules and regulations”.

Specific competence in Cardiac Surgery

In 2007, the Belgian Surgical Commission of Recognition (Dutch and French speaking), the Belgian Professional Surgical Association, the Royal Belgian Surgical Society and the BACTS agreed to create a certificate, on proposition by the BACTS, to be signed by these 4 parties. This certificate of specific competence in cardiac surgery will not be signed by the Minister (on advice by the High Council). However, it will recognize the specific competence of cardiac surgeons as can be required by foreign or internal stake holders.
The Accreditation Committee prepared guidelines for current and future Cardiac Surgeons.

On Saturday May 3rd, during the BACTS session of the Belgian Surgical Week, the first certificates of recognition of ‘Competence in cardiac surgery’ (in its actualized version) were announced by the Chair of the Accreditation Committee, Prof Dr I. Rodrigus.

Please visit our website (http://www.bacts.org/committee/eacts/175) in the near future to prepare the necessary documents for your accreditation.

Database Committee

The new Database Committee has done an excellent work in finalizing the 2005 report and is near to complete the 2006 report that should be presented to the Board in the incoming weeks before being released on the website.

Center data are mailed to the head of the Departments. Members can download these reports. Please send your data concerning the year 2007 as soon as possible.

An annually updated list of accreditation numbers of scientific meetings is also available on the website.

On behalf of the Board of Directors 2007-2011