Report of Continuing Medical Education

Name of the event: New Frontiers in Interventional Cardiology

 Location: Krakow, Poland

 Date: December 2-6, 2014

 Brief description: New Frontiers in Interventional Cardiology workshop (NFIC) is an annual meeting in Krakow (Poland) which gathers cardiologists, cardiac surgeons, specialists in angiology and radiology from all over Europe, Japan and USA. This meeting is an international workshop with more than 1400 participants each year (doctors, nurses, pharmaceutical industry). The course focuses mainly on acute coronary syndromes and live case presentations with panel discussions. However, each year dedicated sessions to new challenging innovations in interventional cardiology are also held including structural heart disease, imaging and peripheral interventions. The course was arranged by Association of Percutaneous Cardiovascular Interventions of the Polish Cardiac Society and organized by Foundation for Medical Research in Krakow and Krakow Cardiovascular Research Institute, in cooperation with European Board for Accreditation in Cardiology (EBAC), EuroPCR and European Association of Percutaneous Cardiovascular Interventions (EAPCI).

The first two days of the meeting was held in Krakow Convention Center and the final two days of the meeting was held in Krakow Old town Theater.  The meeting was well attended by all disciplines.  The main curriculum of the meeting included percutaneous revascularization of the coronary arteries, percutaneous valve repair/replacement, physiologic and radiological evaluation of cardiac diseases and presentation of challenging cases in interventional cardiology.  At one section of the meeting, the organizers arranged for a live broadcast of the interventional procedure form the affiliated hospital and both scientific and technical questions were answered by the presenters.

Trainees from various disciplines of Cardiology, Interventional Radiology and Cardiac Surgery presented their research and academic work and the best presentations were awarded by the Meeting organizing Committee. One of my favorite sections which was well attended was a workshop on Research Grant proposal writing and guide to review and edit manuscripts for journal. This workshop was in a panel format presented by the editorial staff of reputable journals.