Interventional Cardiology - born in Europe
Interventional Cardiology was born in 1977 in Europe, when a German working in Switzerland, Andreas Gruentzig, completed the first coronary angioplasty. This intervention restored normal blood supply to the heart muscle by dilating an obstruction of a coronary artery using a balloon.
Coronary angioplasty now far exceeds bypass surgery
During the last thirty years, many technical improvements such as stents were made - always spearheaded by Europeans - making coronary angioplasty the most frequent "operation" performed in Europe, with more than 600,000 procedures in 2005. This far exceeds bypass surgery, the conventional alternative modality to restore flow to the heart muscle, due to its reduced invasiveness (all the procedure is done via a 2 mm cannula inserted under local anaesthesia in the wrist or the groin). Coronary angioplasty can also be used to open acutely accluded coronary arteries during myocardial infarction.
The largest training course, but no official organisation
Europe also has the largest training course only dedicated to interventional
cardiology, historically created by Jean Marco but open to contributors from all major European centers, attended by more than 11,000 cardiologists from all over the world.
Still, unlike in the USA or other geographical areas (South America, South East Asia, etc), there was no official organisation working on a homogeneous training process for interventionalists in all European countries, ensuring proper collection and independent auditing of PCI results for quality control purposes, while promoting research.
A common goal: a common platform
Last September in Stockholm, during the ESC Annual Congress, the ESC Working Group on Interventional Cardiology officially announced its goal to create an Association with EuroPCR to strenghten the possibilities to work on the many challenges created by the exponential increase of PCI procedures and operators in the last years.
This is a historical opportunity that both EuroPCR and the ESC WG 10 have considered as absolutely critical: to share the best of both institutions in order to serve the objectives of education and science via a common European platform.
This project was started several years ago, and has been strongly supported by Jean Marco,from Toulouse, France, Chairman of the Board of Directors of EuroPCR, Antoine Lafont, Paris, France, Chairman of the ESC WG 10, and by Jean-Pierre Bassand, Besancon, France, Michal Tendera, Katowice, Poland, Kim Fox, London, UK - i.e. the past, current and future presidents of the European Society of Cardiology.
EuroPCR and EuroIntervention
In 2005, the ESC WG of Interventional Cardiology officially recognised EUROPCR as its official meeting after 2 years of active collaboration, and the journal EuroIntervention, launched in cooperation with EuroPCR, has become the official journal of the ESC WG of Interventional Cardiology.
A new Association: the EAPCI
In the last months, the ESC WG of Interventional Cardiology and EuroPCR have actively cooperated to develop a proposal of a European Association of Percutaneous Cardiovascular Interventions. The project has been endorsed officially by both the Board of Directors of EuroPCR and the Board of the ESC. Both institutions have actively worked on the statutes of the future Association in order to fulfill its commitments.
On Tuesday, 16 May 2006, it has been officially announced in the Opening Ceremony of EuroPCR that an agreement has been signed. To ensure continuity with the activities of the previous WG, a former Chairman of the WG who has actively worked in EuroPCR in the last years, William Wijns from Aalst, Belgium, has been nominated as first President of the Association, followed by Carlo di Mario, London, UK, current President Elect of the ESC WG 10.
As current chairman of the ESC Working Group on Interventional Cardiology, I fully support the 2 future Presidents, and more in general this fantastic project, and I will continue to strive to achieve this goal until final approval by the General Assembly of the ESC in Barcelona in September 2006.
Antoine Lafont,
Chairman, ESC WG on Interventional Cardiology
Read more about the ESC Working Group on Interventional Cardiology and the background to the EACPI here.