Editorial - June 2020

Dear members of the ESC Working Group on Cardiovascular Pharmacotherapy,

Although these reports are regular, April and May have been very unusual due to the pandemic crisis.

This made our nucleus to face new challenges in many aspects, and our initiatives were impeded by the fact that we could not meet face-to-face. Nevertheless, we can say that we had a period of above-average activities concerning educational meetings, position papers, handbook, Journal, and concepts for congresses. We met almost twice a month by zoom.

Our educational meetings are two since last year, “All about clinical trials (AACT)” and “Pharmacotherapy in old people (POP)”. Both will take place this autumn again but in a webinar style. AACT is in December in Stockholm, perhaps only as webinar or preferably also face-to-face. POP is in Spain and definitely encompasses two days of webinar. New educational methods will be applied, so we can be at the forefront of innovative concepts in education.

For position papers we have developed new rules to publish faster and timely. This means that our pipeline will be always open and only papers that are in an advanced stage will enter the approval process of the ESC. I would like to invite every single member of the WG to approach our Nucleus if you have an idea for such a paper or a review. At this time, we have interesting topics like Hypokalemia, Venous Thromboembolism, and Covid-19, to name just a few.

The ESC had to cancel the Amsterdam Congress and all subspeciality meetings, unfortunately also ours. We are already planning EuroCVP 2021 where we will use our experience with the educational meetings as described above.

Do I have a wish for the WG members? Yes! We need more members in the WG, at this time we are about 800. The new challenges of the pandemic and how we deal with them makes it even easier to enter the WG. Do not forget that we have an excellent journal, with an impact factor of nearly 7 and a fantastic handbook.

Best wishes,

Heinz Drexel, MD

Chairman 2018-2020

ESC WG on Cardiovascular Pharmacotherapy

Back to other news from the ESC Working Group on Cardiovascular Pharmacotherapy