6th World Congress Pediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery – Cape Town, South Africa

The recent World Congress of Pediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery, held in Cape Town, South Africa, was, as always, a fantastic conference. The meeting is unique in that in addition to presenting the latest information on “first world” congenital heart surgery, there is a broader emphasis on surgery in the rest of the world as well as on health systems, program development, and presentations from the patient perspective given by adults who had heart surgery as children. One very memorable such presentation was given on the first day of the conference, by a woman who is a survivor of an atrial switch procedure done in the early years of heart surgery. Among other things, she encourages the audience to think beyond the usually-reported 20 year “long term” results; in her opinion, that’s not very long! As a surgeon, although I obviously enjoyed the “surgical” presentations given by my own senior colleagues, what was perhaps even more beneficial to me was listening to presentations that broadened my horizons, such as those about program development and about preventive cardiology. Of course, the biggest benefit of attending large international meetings is the opportunity to network with other professionals in the field; it was great to catch up with old friends from various stages in my career, and to collect business cards of new people with whom I share common interests. The only down side to the trip from my perspective, other than the marathon 20 hour return flight from Johannesburg to Washington (one of four of my return flights- but the longest one!), was the fact that the World Congress is always such a great meeting that there is very little time to get out and see the country. I only saw enough of South Africa to make me want to go back!

- ICHF Staff Surgeon and Congress Presenter, Dr. Kathleen Fenton

 

Dr. William Novick, Dr. Igor Polivenok, Dr. Kathleen Fenton, and Frank Molloy all presented at this year’s WCPCCS. You can view their presentations in the links below.

Presentations: 

State of the Art Pediatric Cardiac Care Assistance  -     Dr. William Novick  Part 1     -      Part 2 

Improvement in Results & Progress of Independent Surgery

w/ Int’l Co-Operation in a Single Ukrainian Center    Dr. Igor Polivenok

Cost Effective Analysis of Congenital Heart Surgery in Developing Countries   Dr. Kathleen Fenton

Fast Track Methods     Frank Molloy, RN

 

Conference e-Posters 

BILL – Double Patch poster
CHRIS – WCpccs.2013eposter-1 
David Wieduwilt Necessity of Biomedical ePoster
Erin Poster
Evaluation of Short Term Educational Strategy 
IGOR Unusual case of CoAo
Kathleen PCCS2013ASDposter
Multinational Multilingual Volunteer Teams 
PCCSposterMentoring