Letter from the Chairman of the Scientific Programme

George Bernard Shaw once said that at the age of 6 he had to stop his education because he had to start school. Shaw was not the only Nobel Prize Winner who hated school.

The problem is not irrelevant and can apply to the myriad of vascular meetings (national, international, local, organized by vascular surgeons, interventional cardiologists or radiologists, society meetings, etc, etc, etc) that take place almost every day world-wide.

Along the same line as G.B. Shaw, many colleagues feel that formal educational structures such as scientific events are waste of time. Some think that one learns more at home in the operating room or in the cardiology or radiology suites or finally at the bedside in the wards; in other words being every day on the field is more an educational gym than participating in scientific events as speaker or attendee.

As usual "in medio stat virtus". It is necessary to continuously update your knowledge, through high level educational programmes, especially in a field like ours in constant evolution, and then go back home and apply the learned principles, innovations and techniques.

In the light of these considerations, we thought that it was time for some reflections and eventually innovations concerning IVEC. The 2009 Presidential letter reflected the past recollections, now a look at the future.

During the last 11 years , IVEC has demonstrated, more and more, its international vocation and a multidisciplinary orientation with the intention to offer especially the Italian colleagues (in particular Interventional radiologists, cardiologists and vascular surgeons) every year an outstanding Faculty of distinguished Speakers from all over the world that were presenting the best of their research, clinical acquisitions and innovations, and endovascular interventions. We felt that this was a unique occasion made available for mostly Italian residents and young doctors to learn from the best expert in the world and for more senior colleagues to be confronted with new ideas and techniques.

This is the spirit that has moved the IVEC Scientific and Organizing Committees during all these year and that led to the decision 5 years ago to hold the IVEC joint with the ISVS European Congress.

The main innovation of this year is that the Scientific Committee has been enlarged to include very distinguished and internationally well known Italian colleagues from specialties other then vascular surgery to guarantee a even more multidisciplinary Scientific Programme.

It is for me a great honor and a real pleasure to announce that:

Luigi Inglese MD, Chief of the Unit of Haemodynamics from the San Donato Hospital, Milan, Italy,

Claudio Rabbia MD, Chief of the Unit of Interventional Angio-Radiology from the Le Molinette Hospital- University of Turin, Italy

have kindly accepted to become Directors of the IVEC Scientific Committee.

Gaetano Deleo MD and Alberto Froio MD Assistant Professors and Members of the medical team of the Chair and Unit of Vascular Surgery at the San Gerardo Teaching Hospital, University of Milano-Bicocca, have also been included in the position of Secretaries of the Scientific Committee.

This year we have received 42 applications for inclusion in the Free Paper Sessions. Twenty abstracts have been selected and included in the Scientific Programme.

In addition we have established for the first time, with the collaboration of COOK Medical, the Residents' Session, during which nine original papers will be presented by Italian residents. Two sessions, the " What's New Sessions" will be dedicated to presentations from Industry. There will be 91 presentations from the International Invited Faculty.

The Opening Ceremony will take place on Thursday the 21st of October at 18.30 hours when Juan Carlos Parodi, MD from Buenos Aires, Argentina will present the Malan Lecture on "Past, Present and Future of Endografting AAA". The Opening Ceremony will be followed by a welcome reception that all participants are invited to attend.

Finally the programme will be completed with debates and a lot of discussion.

The IVEC/ISVS 2010 is an update on a multi-disciplinary international, high level scientific programme: don't miss it!