Sadly, one of Europe’s greatest heart failure champions, Philip A. Poole-Wilson, died suddenly and unexpectedly on the 4th of March this year. I can add little to the many appropriate words expressing shock and sadness that have been sent from all corners of the World. We will recognize our Association’s great fondness for Philip and his huge achievements at our annual congress in Nice, where we will have a special lecture in his memory. We will also award the first Philip Poole-Wilson Research Fellowships in Nice.
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| Prof. Philip A. Poole-Wilson |
Despite this sad note, I hope everyone is looking forward to
HF 2009 in Nice – we have a
fantastic programme in a beautiful setting. This year we are joined by our colleagues from the International Society for Heart Research and we have enhanced the clinical content of our meeting as well, as described below by Kenneth Dickstein. A final, finishing touch has just been made to the programme with the selection of six exciting
late breaking trials from among those submitted. Further details to follow!
As always, we have many other activities completed and underway. The
Heart Failure Winter Research Meeting goes for strength to strength, taking place in Les Diablerets – in Switzerland in January of this year from the first time. We have appointed a new Editor of our journal, the
European Journal of Heart Failure, who will be Prof DJ van Veldhuisen, FESC, from Groningen, The Netherlands. Dirk will start in January 2010 as Editor in Chief. We are certain Dirk and his team will build on the fantastic work done by Karl Swedberg, FESC, and John Cleland, FESC, and their teams before him. One forthcoming highlight in our journal is a consensus statement on palliative care. Another important initiative of the
Committee on Translational Research is the organisation of a workshop on ‘Cardiovascular side effects of cancer therapies’, which will take place in Brussels on May 6-7, 2009, and which I hope you will agree is extremely relevant and timely. Another initiative we are exploring is a “
Heart Failure Awareness Day”, as described below in more details by Ulf Dahlström.
Our
Committees continue to play a vital role in stimulating clinical and scientific thinking on all aspects of heart failure and are heavily involved in many
educational activities. On May 3-5, the
Biomarkers in Heart Failure course will be organized at the European Heart House in Nice. Some of our Committees’ reports are available later in this newsletter. We have also instituted a new Study Group on Peripartum Cardiomyopathy and another new Study Group on Exercise Rehabilitation in Heart Failure is planned.
Prof. John McMurray, FESC
President of the Heart Failure Association