Dear colleagues,
It was almost ten years ago that we set foot in Copenhagen for a CIRSE Annual Meeting, which welcomed around 4,800 attendees. Since then, not only our congress attendance has grown; when we look back over this decade, we see a strong evolution of interventional radiology, both in size and reputation. Thanks to advances in technology and techniques, gamechanging interventional radiology research in fields such as neurology and oncology has meant that a number of minimally invasive
therapies have become a mainstay in medical guidelines and interventional radiologists have positioned themselves as key members of multidisciplinary teams. On this note, there have been exciting developments in the field of patient management whereby interventional radiologists truly assume responsibility for the patient they are treating.
In 2017, we are happy to say that our annual congress reflects the bright future of this medical discipline, with a plethora of sessions to suit all experience levels.
We continuously endeavour to offer delegates a full and wide-ranging educational programme. As endovascular therapies are such a major focus of the congress, the programme will again consist of three distinct categories: arterial, venous and aortic interventions; the latter covered in the Interdisciplinary Endovascular Aortic Symposium (IDEAS), a parallel multidisciplinary programme which will run from Sunday to Tuesday for the third year and will include the IDEAS Training Village, introduced last year,
for practical hands-on learning in cooperation with our industry partners. Alongside sessions on embolotherapy, stroke treatment, interventional oncology and non-vascular
interventions, there will also be a big focus on clinical practice this year, with ample attention given to anaesthesia, sedation and analgesia, and patient management, which will be the theme of the not-to-be-missed Opening Ceremony today. On Tuesday, there will be the "CIRSE Meets…" Session with the European Wound Management Association, which will cover the essentials of wound care, focusing on ulcers. We are once again running the Student Programme for medical students from all over Europe and have expanded sessions for the younger generation of IRs through our European Trainee Forum, which aims to provide a network for trainees and newly
qualified IRs in Europe.
A New Level of Learning Last year, new session formats including Expert Round Tables (ERT) and Expert Case Discussions (ECD) made their debut, which we hope will again boost audience participation. The Super Tuesday session, which was also introduced last year, will put important scientific papers and trial results in the spotlight. Likewise, the News on Stage sessions will showcase new study results, techniques and hot topics in IR by researchers during the early afternoons in the exhibition area to give delegates the opportunity to engage in lively discussion in an informal atmosphere. Building upon the collaborative learning environment, which takes note of current and future trends in the subspecialty, we are proud to announce the first Women in IR Session, which aims to understand why there is a lack of female doctors entering interventional radiology and identify clear solutions on how this gap can be overcome. As noted earlier, the importance of clinical knowledge and entrepreneurial thinking for the future of interventional radiology is increasingly being recognised. In order to account for this, a new workshop, Successful Strategies in IR, will provide practical insights and solutions from a variety of clinical examples. As learning about the latest medical devices and equipment is an integral part of the congress experience, CIRSE 2017 has come up with a new training format called Hands-on Device Trainings (HDT). This new format replaces the Hands-on Workshops and will be more device-orientated, with clearer learning objectives and guidelines. All Hands-on Device Trainings are linked to a theoretical workshop within the programme. Are You Ready (for the new radiation safety directive)?
Since the creation of our Radiation Protection Subcommittee and the Radiation Protection Pavilion (RPP) at CIRSE, it has been one of CIRSE’s key initiatives to provide advice and education on radiation protection for those working in the medical field and their patients. With new radiation protection legislation on the way, it will become indispensable to stay ahead of the game, which is why this topic will be a core theme of CIRSE 2017, featuring the Radiation Protection Pavilion and a Hot Topic
Symposium on radiation risks and prevention for both patients and physicians. |