“That’s the way press like it” or what stories are likely to hit the headlines this year 

How the Press and PR Committee decides

As tradition goes, the Press and PR committee held a press selection meeting towards the end of May 2007, in which the prearranged programme and abstract based programme were dissected in a great level of detail over a couple of productive days.

Concretely each member was given a number of sessions and abstracts to review, according to their respective subspeciality, to select those most likely to trigger interest amongst our press visitors in Vienna. After those two days of careful reviewing and passionate debating– everyone was happy to emerge from the meeting with the official press selection, which creates the content that you then see:

• On one hand, in the press conference programme and in the press release selection, that comes in very useful to guide reporters through the wealth of the official ESC Congress 2007 scientific programme and helps them to avoid overlooking sessions that might go otherwise unnoticed
• On the other hand, in the congress newspaper articles written both by professional journalists and commissioned authors for you to enjoy at the congress, with your morning coffee.

In this article we give you a glimpse of the topics that have been deemed sufficiently hot to retain both the media and your own attention…

OUR SELECTION FOR THE PRESS

Says Professor Van der Wall, Press & PR Committee Chair and ESC Vice-President (pictured right):

‘This year’s Congress Press Book contains an interesting array of press releases on subjects including sudden cardiac death in the young; mortality in subjects on lipid lowering drugs; long-term safety and efficacy of paclitaxel-eluting stents in chronic total coronary occlusions; the premature interruption of dual antiplatelet therapy in the world of real practice; the heart of an athlete; whether tilt tests are effective in practice and results from the Euro Heart Survey.’

ESC Press Conferences and Releases

We will have 12 Press Conferences and a total of 47 press releases are being prepared for this. The releases are under embargo and will only be available at the congress. Topics include:

• DES: Friends or foe?
• Challenging Acute Heart Failure in Europe
• The Benefits and Risks of Sports
• New Strategies in Risk Management.
• You can view the press releases immediately following the press conferences on the VPO section of the website. The press conference speakers and their topics will be available soon online

The full press releases will be available from the Virtual Press Office at the time of the press conferences.

An additional 42 press releases are produced on other subjects that could be of particular interest for the press. Watch out for the "ESC Press Book" in the Virtual Press Office from day 1 of the congress.

OUR SELECTION FOR THE ESC CONGRESS NEWS

Says Barbara Mulder, Editor-in-Chief of the official newspaper of the Congress (pictured left):

"We all know that it is impossible to attend all sessions of interest as we are also busy networking, presenting, chairing etc so we believe ESC Congress News is the perfect publication to read on-site for those of you with a keen interest in the latest scientific discoveries (evidently Hot Line sessions including basic science will be getting plenty of coverage) while features will provide a more in-depth analysis on a number of topics that we read a lot about in the news”.