Teaching courses

The objective of our Association is to promote knowledge of the normal and abnormal heart and circulation during growth and development, and to ensure a high standard of professional practice in paediatric cardiology in Europe. The Association has created training recommendations in Paediatric Cardiology, and strongly supports teaching and training of younger colleagues over the course of their training. With this in mind, different working groups of the Association have organized training courses for our junior members. A course devoted to morphology was held in Leiden, The Netherlands, in January, followed by a course on arrhythmias, held in Leipzig, Germany, in April. By the time you read this report, the 2nd European Echocardiography Course on Congenital Heart Disease will have taken place in Prague, in October. We will then have a Hands-On Cardiac Morphology course in Padua, Italy, in May of 2008, and a course in echocardiography in Barcelona in October, 2008. All the courses held thus far have been well attended, and the evaluations show that the participants have been well satisfied by their content. We thus urge the trainers to encourage their fellows to participate in these courses, and further to offer to become part of the faculties for such courses, so that we can ensure that the courses are taught by the top experts in the different subspecialties of paediatric cardiology and its related disciplines. The courses are designed to be of small size, and affordable, in terms of fees as well as for accommodation and traveling expenses. As the number of attendees is limited, the number of applicants usually exceeds the number of those accepted. Because of this, preference is given to junior members of the Association who have paid their annual subscription. This is one more reason to join the Association, particularly for those still undergoing training!

Support for Junior Fellows who attend the Annual Meeting

Another of the objectives of the Association is to promote active research in the field of Paediatric Cardiology. The Council, therefore, has decided to reward those junior fellows whose abstract or poster has been accepted for the Annual meeting by reducing the required for their registration by 100 euros. We hope that, stimulated by this initiative, even more high-quality abstracts will be submitted than during previous years, and that more of our junior fellows will be encouraged to take an active role in the Annual meeting to be held in Venice in May of 2008.

Teaching Course during Annual meeting is now called ‘Update on…’

Traditionally, there has been a Teaching Course held on the first day of each Annual Meeting. We now realize that this creates a potential risk for confusion, since the Association now organizes during each year several basic teaching courses in different fields of Paediatric Cardiology. The Council has decided, therefore, as from May of 2008, to call the Teaching Course held during the Annual meeting an ‘Update on…’. The Council hopes that the new name better describes the content of the course. The ‘Update on…’ Course will give an extensive overview of a specific field in Paediatric Cardiology, even for fully trained Paediatric Cardiologists.

The next course will be Update on Paediatric Cardiac Intensive Care. During the morning, the programme will deal with general issues concerning children with cardiac disease, such as the general principles for the management of acute and chronic patients; shock in the cardiac patient; adequate transfer from the operating room; and basic physiology when ventilating a patient with cardiac disease. The afternoon sessions deal with drugs needed in postoperative care; treatment of pulmonary hypertension; management of postoperative arrhythmias; acute management of the patient after cardiac transplantation; anatomic reasons for postoperative problems; and new options for treatment during peri- and postoperative care of those with mechanical assist devices.

Everybody is welcomed to attend the course for a small additional fee. In this way, it is possibly easily to obtain an update on Paediatric Cardiac Intensive Care within one single day!

The website

We commenced our web-based data base in 2006. This has made it possible further to develop the services provided for our members. It is now possible to pay the annual subscription on-line. Council encourages all members to make use of the new option, which has been made easy and safe to use. To make on-line payments, however, members must first ensure that they are registered with the Association. This is achieved through the membership information area of the web page of the Association http://www.aepc.org. At the time of registration, we would also ask all our members to check the data stored relative to themselves by the Association, and to make any necessary amendments.

There is also an additional link in the information area to change addresses, if this is necessary. Using this link, it is possible for members also to change their address if they are already registered, but the existing address is incorrect. It is crucially important that we, as an Association, know the correct addresses of any members who might recently have moved their affiliations. Only if the Association holds the correct addresses can we ensure that all members receive not only information about our activities, but also their issues of Cardiology in the Young, which should now be distributed to all members who have paid their dues. When registering, members should also mark the working group to which they wish to belong. Our working groups are the backbone of the Association. Within these groups, the top experts of the different subspecialties meet and discuss further their activities.

There is a lot of data on our website that need continuous updating. From now on, our Junior Fellow in Council, Tara Bharucha, will take care of developing the web page of the Association. We encourage all members to participate in this process! Please contact Tara if you find any information that is not accurate, or if you have further ideas for developing our webpage. Her details are to be found on web page.

Cardiology in the Young

All members who have paid their annual subscription should now be receiving Cardiology in the Young six times a year.

If you do not receive the Journal in the future, or you cannot register on our web page, please check that

• • your address is correct

• • you have taken care of your annual subscription

In case of any continuing difficulty, please feel free to contact the Secretary General.

Co-operation with other organizations

The Association has good connections with various committees within the European Society of Cardiology. The President, or his nominated deputy, represents the Association in these Committees. Co-operation with the tens of thousands of members of the European Cardiac Society permits the goals of the Association better to be realized. The President and Secretary-General represent the Association in the Cardiology section of the European Union of Medical Specialists. The Association has re-established close and active co-operation with the European Academy of Paediatrics, retaining its position as an observing member in the Academy. We all are treating children and adolescents, and we share same problems. Co-operation with the Union and Academy enables the association to advocate important paediatric issues, such as testing of drugs used in children, via two routes.

Co-operation with cardiologists and cardiac surgeons is vital for our discipline. Members of the Association actively participate in the work of working group on Grown-ups with Congenital Cardiac Defects. The past-president of the association, András Szatmári, represents the Association in the nucleus of the working group. The Task Force for Grown-ups with Congenital Cardiac Defects, and the working group on Congenital Cardiac Surgery, are active working groups of the Association. In order to strengthen the co-operation with the cardiac surgeons, the Association is organizing its next Annual Meeting in co-operation with the European Congenital Heart Surgery Association. The meeting will be held in Venice, in May of 2008.

The Association is also ready actively to participate in designing the program during the 5^th World Congress of the Paediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery, which will be held in Cairns, Australia, from June 22 through 26, 2009. In order to support and stimulate its members to participate in the World Congress, the Association has cancelled its own Annual meeting for 2009. We will have only a business meeting, to be arranged during the Annual Meeting of the European Cardiac Society in 2009.

As the only current democratically organized association acting globally in the field of Cardiology in the Young, the Association for European Paediatric Cardiology has also followed carefully the recent formation of the new World Society for Paediatric Cardiac Surgery. Our President is representing the Association in the ongoing negotiations.

New Officers

The office of Treasurer is one of the most demanding posts in the Council. Because of this, Council has proposed that the term of office of the Treasurer be extended by one year, until May of 2009. The extension of the term enables a smooth transition of the office to the new Treasurer. We need to replace one of our councillors in 2008. It is the hope of Council that the new Councillor will assume the duties of Treasurer in 2009. All our members should now be thinking about a possible candidate for this challenging position. Nominations for the Councillor must be signed by five ordinary members from two or more countries, and should be received by the Secretary-General at least four months before the next Annual Meeting. The Secretary-General will send all active members a form for nominations with the newsletter at the beginning of 2008. We are anticipating multiple nominations.

Annual Meeting in Venice

Please mark now in your calendar the dates for the Annual Meeting to be held in 2008. The dates are 21 through 24 of May, and the meeting will be held in Venice, Italy. Please visit the official web page of the Annual Meeting at http://www.aepcmeeting2008.com/. There is also a link to this page on the home page of the Association. The charm of “La serenissima” will frame the scientific sessions! We warmly invite all of you to join us next spring in Venice.

In closing our Newsletters for 2007, we hope you all will have a peaceful and relaxing Holiday Season, and we wish you a merry Christmas, and a happy and prosperous 2008!

Eero Jokinen

Secretary-General

André Bozio

President