Dear Members,
We hope that you have all had a great summer!
The 3rd Scientific Meeting of our Society held in Istanbul June 23-26, 2011 was a great success and was attended by a total of 631 colleagues from all over the world. The Postgraduate Course on the functionally univentricular heart had a great number of excellent presentations and was dedicated to Francis Fontan and Guillermo Kreutzer, both attending the meeting. The Stella Van Praagh Lecture on the anatomy of the functionally univentricular heart was ably delivered by James Wilkinson from Australia and Robin Kinsley from South Africa delivered a moving Castaneda Lecture on the plight of children with congenital heart disease in Africa. We would like to thank all the presenters of abstracts and posters and all the attendees for their enthusiastic participation. Many thanks also go to the Local Host and Chairman of the Program Committee, Sertac Cicek, to the Chairman of the Postgraduate Course, Constantine Mavroudis and to the entire Program Committee for their tireless work. The spectacular venue of the meeting, the perfect organization, together with the very high quality of the scientific sessions have proven, one more time, the huge success of our Society.
The Istanbul meeting was truly historic for several reasons. After the first Scientific Meeting in Washington (2007), and the second in Cairns (2009), Istanbul will be remembered as the first "independent" meeting of our Society. Istanbul was also the first large Scientific Meeting of the World Society coming together with our new World Journal for Pediatric and Congenital Heart Surgery, which held its Annual Editorial Board meeting and which will publish the best oral and poster presentations in the near future. The World Journal, ably led by its Editor in Chief, Marshall Jacobs, is the only scientific journal specifically dedicated to pediatric and congenital heart surgery and is currently distributed in 77 countries. Finally, the Istanbul meeting witnessed the first renewal in the leadership of the World Society since its establishment 5 years ago. The new Officers and a renewed Governing Council will lead the World Society into the future.
In 2012, we will continue to reach out and will participate in a Joint Meeting in Lima, Peru in March along with the Sociedad Latina de Cardiologia y Cirurgia Cardiovascular Pediatrica. The topic of the Postgraduate course will be anomalous pulmonary venous connections. As we proceed with the leadership renewal, we invite all members to participate in a year-long process of a Retreat on the Future. All the committees will do a lot of the work during the upcoming year seeking input and participation from all of you. This will culminate into a one day meeting in Chicago in September 2012 during which the action plan will be presented and debated.
The future of the World Society appears bright, but will only be ensured by the active participation from all of you in attending the meetings, working on committees, paying your dues and above all participating in the global efforts in education and the provision of services to the children born with congenital heart disease.
As your new President and new Executive Director we will do our best to continue our fruitful and complete collaboration in service of our members and in the fulfilment of the goals of our Society!
Giovanni Stellin
President
Christo I. Tchervenkov
Executive Director
(look for more photos from the conference to be posted soon)