To all members of the Belgian Association for Cardio-thoracic Surgery
Dear Members,
Dear Colleagues,
It is with great pleasure that I would like to invite you to the 13th Scientific Meeting of the Belgian Association for Cardio-Thoracic Surgery that will take in Brussels on November 15 2008.
As explained in the May 2008 Newsletter, both the Scientific Committee and the BACTS Board members felt that some innovations should be proposed to the surgical community in order to increase members interest and active participation to this annual meeting.
Though optional, video presentations have not been submitted this year, and the abstract submission rate has remained constant compare to the prior year.
In addition to the ten best abstract that have been selected, I think that the scientific committee has created a very interesting program in which a large share has been given to top-ranked international physicians with both surgical and medical backgrounds. The Cardiac lecture will update us on a recent hot topic, with Drs A. Vahanian, from Paris, and Th. Walther, from Leipzig, as co-presentors of a lecture entitled "Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation (TAVI): The cardiologist's and surgeon's views"
The Thoracic invited lecturer is Doug Mathisen, past president of the STS and Chief of cardiothoracic surgery at the Massachussetts General Hospital (Boston, US), the world field leaders in tracheal surgery for decades. Dr Mathisen will update our knowledge with a lecture entitled "State-of-the-Art in tracheal surgery "
The complete program is already available on the BACTS website and a flyer of the scientific program has been posted.
As usual, the General Assembly will take place from 8.30 - 9.30 hrs (registration starts at 8.00 hrs). At 9.30, the report from the Database Committee of the cardiac surgical activity during calendar year 2006 will be presented by the DB committee chairman, Dr B. Stockman.
The DB committee has been working relentlessly in order to present to the BACTS members the most recent data available and has now nearly closed the gap from earlier reports.
Unfortunately, the 2007 data will probably not be presented since a dozen of participating heart centers have not sent in their correction yet. Those data should be available for the BACTS cardiac session at the 10th Belgian Surgical Week in Ostende on May 3rd, 2009.
The Assembly will be followed by the 13th Congress on Cardio-Thoracic Surgery (10.00 – 16.30 hours).
The different committees of the society will present their reports during the meeting. Despite promising advancement made under the leadership of Dr I. Rodrigus, our past president and Chairman of the Accreditation Committee, a step backward in the process toward recognition of competence in Cardiac Surgery took place during the last months. A more detailed analysis will be presented by Dr Rodrigus during the General Assembly.
As a consequence, the first 36 certificates of competence signed only by the BACTS Accreditation Committee have been delivered to applicants this year.
Partnership with Royal Belgian Society for Surgery and 10th Anniversary Meeting of the Belgian Surgical Week (BSW).
As many of you probably know, the topic of the 2009 year BSW congress (Ostend, 29 April-2 May 2009), proposed by congress president, Dirk Van Raemdonck, is “The surgical community : reunited” and the scientific theme entitled :
“Surgeons collaborating in the Patient’s best interest”
The Board of the BACTS has fully supported an active participation of our members during this meeting and a BACTS thoracic committee has been set up to build up a half-day session dedicated to thoracic surgery. This will come in addition to the Saturday’s morning ‘Ethics and Economy’ session that has been organized by the BACTS since 2003.
Similarly to prior years, the Acta Chirurgica Belgica remains the official journal of the BACTS. Peer reviewed abstracts of our yearly Congress on Cardio-Thoracic Surgery and invited papers by BACTS members will be published in this journal.
You will find enclosed:
- The agenda of the 13th General Assembly
- A procuration for those not able to attend the meeting
- The minutes of the 12th General Assembly
- The list of candidate of new BACTS members
- A flyer of the scientific program
Venue of the 13th BACTS Annual Meeting :
Sodehotel- Woluwe
Avenue F. Mounierlaan 5
B-1200 Brussels
Please remember to register for the scientific meeting via the website www.bacts.org or https://www.medicongress.com/reg/registrationbacts.aspx).
Looking forward to seeing you all on November 15th for an interactive and interesting meeting,
Yours sincerely,
Alain Poncelet, MD
BACTS President 2007-2009