Dear ISMICS Members:

I am pleased to report to you about the last ISMICS Board of Directors Meeting which took place on October 18th 2009 in Vienna.

We discussed our last Annual Meeting in San Francisco, which was attended by 473 registered professionals and additional participants from industry. Despite the restrictions imposed by the world financial crisis, this was the third highest number of registrations in the Society's 12 years. Our target for Berlin 2010 is to achieve a total of 500 professionals. Therefore, I hope you already have plans to come to Berlin in 2010 and I ask you to encourage your colleagues to join you.

In Vienna, the ISMICS Board of Directors analyzed the results of the post-meeting survey. We have noted that although a large percentage of people opened the survey, far fewer actually filled out the session questions. In 2010, completion of the survey will be mandatory before an attendee can print out his/her CME Certificate or a Letter of Attendance. It is very important for us to get an honest opinion from as many participants as possible about our meeting. This also helps us gauge interest in individual topics and learn which sessions are well attended. I kindly ask all members to support this; your opinion and suggestions are helpful and necessary to integrate improvements. We have noted that some sessions were very popular, such as the “Pitfalls” session organized and moderated by Dr. Subramanian, which will be repeated in 2010. We will also expand our Thoracic Program for 2010, offering a full Thoracic Track under Professor Walter Weder from Zurich.

We have also decided that there should be a Post-Meeting Survey for industry. This will give us information on how to improve industry participation in our meetings.

In Vienna we intensively discussed which requirements a Hotel or Convention Centre should meet to be an ideal venue for an ISMICS meeting. We agreed that ISMICS needs a modern and generous venue. We think that the Berlin InterContinental Hotel meets all these requirements, offering plenty of space and a gracious and modern interior.

ISMICS 2010 ANNUAL SCIENTIFIC MEETING

We discussed at length the Scientific Program for 2010. Dr. Francesco Maisano presented the key points on behalf of the Scientific Program Committee. On Wednesday we will continue to focus on post-graduate education, with several different options for our attendees. ISMICS 2010 will also offer a joint-PG-course focusing on TEVAR therapy on Wednesday in cooperation with the Berlin Heart Centre, led by Professor Hetzer and Dr. Zipfel and their team. We are pleased to be able to offer a high-calibre PG-course for endovascular therapy. On Saturday we plan a session with our partners in Cardiology focussing on hybrid operations and the needs when planning a hybrid suite. We want to discuss how cardiology and cardiothoracic surgery could become more entwined. In my opinion this topic is very interesting and might attract a large audience on Saturday morning. Our Program Chairs, Dr. Maisano, Dr. Weder and Dr. Nifong are hard at work in planning for Berlin.

During the Board meeting in Vienna we had many meetings with our industry partners regarding support for next year’s meeting in Berlin, and we are pleased in the significant interest demonstrated during our discussions. We are offering multiple training opportunities for industry, and already have commitments for extended hands-on training centres.

WINTER WORKSHOP

We all look forward to this year's Winter Workshop in New Delhi, 11 to 13 December 2009. I am sure Dr. Naresh Trehan will have organized an excellent workshop and I hope to see many of you there.

Negotiations for future Winter Workshops are underway with representatives from Buenos Aires and China. We will report more following our next Board of Directors Meeting in Ft. Lauderdale in January.

ISMICS CONSENSUS STATEMENTS

The ISMICS Consensus Statements are very successful. They are one of ISMICS most important methods of commenting on new technologies, and our “expert consensus panels” bring together some of the world’s leaders on specific topics. ISMICS is unique in how it organizes its consensus conferences and we follow a scientific approach based on data, where questions are presented, considered by the panel, and then answered by the panel with a series of statements and recommendations. The Meta-Analysis and research are done by Professor Davy Cheng and Janet Martin, PhD. In 2010 the topic will be Minimally Invasive Mitral Valve Surgery, and our Chair will be Professor Volkmar Falk.

RESPONSE TO THE NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE

After an intensive literature search Davy Cheng, Janet Martin and Francis Ferdinand published a response in the New England Journal of Medicine in response to the critical papers by Lopes, et al. regarding minimally invasive vein preparation. This was important to us, because the publication of Lopes, et al. shows some structural defects and the conclusion contrasts with the published ISMICS-Consensus Statement. We were fortunate to have Keith Allen, Chair of the EVH Consensus Statement panel, participate in the formulation of the response as well.

Meanwhile the New England Journal of Medicine published a new study about off-pump coronary bypass surgery. Although the study is accomplished, it has significant weak points, and the inclusion of some inexperienced surgeons clearly led to discrimination against off-pump techniques. Past ISMICS Presidents John Puskas and Michael Mack are preparing a response which we hope will be considered for publication.

INNOVATIONS

The journal INNOVATIONS clearly gained structure and stature in the last twelve months since Professor Damiano took over as Editor-in-chief. In Vienna Dr. Damiano reported on the development of the journal, the improved review times and the better quality articles. The Directors agree that all energy must be applied by our members, in order to achieve our goal of receiving indexing by the National Library of Medicine next year. A special help here is Ms. Carol Blasberg, our Managing Editor, who now works exclusively for INNOVATIONS. This required further financial support by ISMICS, but the Society is committed to producing a fine peer-reviewed journal which fills a void left open by other leading CT journals.

The strongest support we need at this time is from all members and cardiothoracic surgeons in the form of submissions for publication. Be it through Case Reports, editorials, To-Do-papers or original presentations, we need your original work. Therefore allow me to take this opportunity to again appeal to you: please submit your scientific work to INNOVATIONS. When we succeed in getting the index approval, we will publish a supplement containing all presentations of the prior years so you can be retrospectively found in the index.

MORE MEMBERS

It is my great pleasure to inform you that ISMICS has currently 787 members. In 2009 the number of members grew by six percent. We aim for a membership of 1000. I hope that we can announce that soon. Hence my call to all of you: support ISMICS, and promote for us. Only with a strong global membership will ISMICS be what it wants to be: a global network of cardiothoracic surgeons who want to actively exchange and share innovations in our specialist area.

As always, the Directors reviewed the finances of ISMICS. ISMICS is a young society without large financial reserves, and we rely on our members’ support as well as successful annual meetings to sustain operations. Good funding requires a regular and timely payment of membership fees. Here we count on you - take advantage of the possibilities of the electronic transfer of membership fees, which is now available to all members via our Members’ Only Page. Dues renewal for the current year is open, and you are asked to renew now for the coming year. ISMICS would have even more opportunities to grow if there were more sponsors who would assist with grants. Do not hesitate to ask friends of cardiothoracic surgery to contribute to ISMICS in order to support innovative cardiothoracic surgery.

Please allow me to give you a preview of the year 2011. The 2011 Meeting will be held in Washington, DC at the Mayflower Renaissance Hotel, June 7 to11, 2011, led by our President-Elect, Dr. Ralph Damiano.

Finally our executive management, through Mrs. Aurelie Alger, our Executive Director, reported about the work of PRRI on behalf of ISMICS. At this point let me express my appreciation and gratitude for Mrs. Alger's professional work. ISMICS’ success is not least a merit of the professional management of this group, which has been associated with us for years, and builds a good basis for ISMICS’ development in the future.

TWITTER

For ISMICS 2010 Berlin, we set up a twitter address on the internet. Twitter lets you keep in touch with people through the exchange of quick and frequent communication in a network of ISMICS-friends. You can find the ISMICS-twitter at: twitter.com #ISMICS10.

Finally, I draw your attention to a short questionnaire with some brief questions about improving our communication with you. Please take a moment to complete the survey - hopefully you can spare a few minutes to assist us in assessing some of the ways we can expand communications with our members.

On behalf of the Board of Directors, I thank you for your cooperation, and wish you and your family a Merry Christmas Season, Peaceful and Healthy Holidays, and a Very Happy New Year.

With best regards,

Prof. Dr. Med. Anno Diegeler