Be the “BEST TEAM” You Can Be!: New Cardiovascular Horizons Symposium and the SICP RCIS Review Course

New Cardiovascular Horizons (NCVH) is being held September 10–13, 2008, in New Orleans, Louisiana. More information is available at www.newcvhorizons.com As NCVH enters its 9th year, what do those health care and cath lab professionals who have never attended the conference need to know? And why should they attend in 2008? As you noted, this year will mark the 9th annual New Cardiovascular Horizons (NCVH) conference. It has grown to be one of the largest international multidisciplinary conferences in existence, with an anticipated 3,500 participants, 150 eminent faculty and 150 industry sponsors. Highlights of the 4-day event include: • 3-day SICP Review Course • 3-day ACVP Mini-CV MBA Session • Saturday Horizons Cath Lab Symposium: Be the “Best Team” You Can Be! • 3 days of “live endovascular cases” from Cardiovascular Institute of the South (CIS) • 4th Annual International Multidisciplinary Critical Limb Ischemia (CLI) Summit with multiple complex live “limb salvage” cases • 2nd Annual Peripheral Vascular Computed Tomography Angiography (CTA) Session in partnership with the Society of Cardiovascular Computerized Tomography (SCCT) • Inaugural Comprehensive Lower Extremity Symposium with dedicated Infrapopliteal Interventional Session • 2nd Annual Michael E. DeBakey Veteran’s Health Administration (VHA) Cardiovascular Symposium and multiple other sessions highlighting peripheral vascular disease and diabetes • Inaugural VHA and APWCA “High Risk Diabetic Foot and Limb Salvage” Session • 3rd Annual Global Endovenous and DVT Summit • Sessions for diabetes, podiatry and wound care professionals. • A special session in partnership with the Association of Black Cardiologists (ABC), to address the “Disparities in the Cardiovascular and Diabetic Care” in the minority population. NCVH has become a true multidisciplinary and multicultural conference. In our partnership with the Society of Invasive Cardiovascular Professionals (SICP), we have created a special review course session which will be of particular interest. The NCVH conference will not only focus on sessions for the physician, but also offers sessions for the registered nurse, nurse practitioner, physician assistant, cath lab professionals and cardiovascular (CV) administrators. Sessions include comprehensive CV and diabetic nursing sessions on September 12th and 13th. NCVH has specifically been organized to provide all necessary yearly continuing medical education credits (CMEs) or continuing education units (CEUs) for all specialties. We take pride in having the most diverse audience of any conference in existence and offer a truly 4-day “total” CV and endovascular experience. The conference takes place in New Orleans, which has made a great comeback since Hurricane Katrina. All is well in New Orleans and the downtown areas important to our conference are even better than ever. Not only is our conference known for its scientific and educational content, but we have plenty of time for New Orleans-style entertainment, jazz cocktail receptions, great food and drinks, as well as our own Horizons Mardi Gras Parade for our attendees where we “close down” Canal Street and ride authentic Mardi Gras floats. The SICP is offering a review course within the 4-day NCVH conference. Why is it important for allied health professionals to attend these courses? The SICP review course offered at NCVH 2008 is the Registered Cardiovascular Invasive Specialist (RCIS) Exam Review. The review course is set to begin immediately after lunch September 10-12, leaving the Wednesday through Friday morning schedule open for the SICP members to attend. It also will allow allied health attendees to participate in the breakfast and lunch symposia, as well as the attendees to sit in and participate on the majority of the morning live case transmissions from CIS on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. The SICP audience will also have the opportunity to attend other multidisciplinary lectures somewhat out of their own day-to-day routine, in critical limb ischemia, wound care, diabetology, general cardiology, etc. You would be surprised to know how many attendees comment that they actually learn more by going to these types of sessions. By Saturday, the review sessions will be complete and the SICP attendees are free to enjoy the Horizons Cath Lab Tech & Nurse Symposium, with prominent SICP faculty including Marsha Holton, Todd Chitwood, Ken Gorski, Chuck Williams, Michael Guiry, Chris Hebert, Gary Chaisson and Regina Deible, as well as other noted faculty. Breakfast and lunch symposia will also be offered on Friday and Saturday. Several other interesting Saturday sessions include the Masters and Legends Summit and “hands-on” workshops, featuring faculty such as Drs. Julio Palmaz, Ron Waxman, Tom Fogarty, Marty Leon, Sameer Mehta and Ted Diethrich. NCVH offers unmatched multidisciplinary education, all at a great DISCOUNT for SICP members. Just the food and beverage during 4 days of breakfast and lunch symposia along with the entertainment in New Orleans is well worth the price. NCVH has developed a reputation for performing challenging “live cases,” especially “limb salvage” interventions. Can you tell us what to expect this year? The majority of our “live cases” are primarily dedicated to the complex endovascular treatment of peripheral arterial disease (PAD). Live cases will start almost immediately on Wednesday, September 10th. There will be 2 hours of live cases from CIS that will be a part of the Master’s Laser and Specialty Balloon Symposium. Naturally, we will be concentrating primarily on these two technologies, but we all know that the treatment of infrainguinal PAD often requires the addition of many of our new CLI tools. Our operators stand ready to perform a half dozen or so complex limb salvage cases during the opening day session. These cases will be mixed in with didactic lectures presented by some of the world’s leading authorities that utilize laser, cryoplasty, Angioscore balloon and CLI interventional technology. Likewise, the moderators and live case panel will also include an experienced collection of interventionalists from around the world. The 4th Annual International CLI Summit on September 11th will provide over 2 hours of live CLI cases from CIS, likely the most challenging live cases during the 4-day event. In 2007, I heard that the CLI Summit was a “standing-room-only” crowd. What can we expect for the 4th Annual CLI Summit in 2008? The International CLI Summit has gained notoriety because of its internationally known faculty, diverse topics and agenda appropriate for interventionalists, surgeons, podiatrists, wound care specialists, etc. The summit is appropriate for the entire multidisciplinary team required to salvage a limb. Faculty includes such renowned worldwide leaders as Drs. Giancarlo Biamino, Dierk Scheinert, Tony Das, Andrew Schmidt, Rajesh Dave, Tom Davis, Eric Dippel, Zvonimir Krajcer, Venkatesh Ramaiah, J. P. Runyon and Roger Gammon. A special presentation will be made by Dr. Claude Minor, who will discuss critical limb ischemia and amputations in the minority population. Perhaps the most exciting part of the all-day CLI Summit will be the multiple live CLI cases that will be transmitted from CIS. Historically, these have been quite complex cases and many of them will involve infrainguinal and especially infrapopliteal revascularization strategies. The majority of the live cases from CIS will be performed by our very own experienced staff, headed by Drs. Craig Walker, Peter Fail, Sam Stagg, III and our experienced cath lab staff, directed by Gary Chaisson, RT(R), RCVT/RCIS. Not only will many of the new CLI tools be presented during the didactic sessions of the summit, but these tools will also be used live during the cases. There will be great interaction between our panel, the live case operators and especially the multidisciplinary audience, where for the first time many wound care specialists, podiatrists, RNs, etc., will actually witness and interact during live limb salvage cases. NCVH has added several new sessions for 2008. Can you briefly describe these new additions? We will be adding several new multidisciplinary sessions in 2008 in addition to our new 2007 events, which included the ABC session, the DeBakey VHA CV session, Masters Laser session, SCCT endorsed PV-CTA session and well-known Masters and Legends symposium, CLI Summit and multiple podiatry and wound care workshops. NCVH will “kick off” on Wednesday, September 10 with a full-day Comprehensive Lower Extremity Symposium highlighted by 2 hours of live cases, the 3rd Annual Global Venous session and the inaugural Infrainguinal and Infrapopliteal Interventional Session. Also on Wednesday, September 10, the all-day inaugural High-Risk Diabetic Foot and “Limb Salvage” session will be jointly endorsed by the American Professional Wound Care Association (APWCA) and the Veterans Administration Hospital System. On Thursday, September 11, the entire day will be dedicated to the 4th Annual Internal “CLI Summit,” which could be of great interest to SICP members, as the morning session will be dedicated to “live limb salvage cases” and a stellar line-up of presentations delivered by luminary interventional speakers that include Drs. Giancarlo Biamino, Tony Das, J.P. Runyon, Rajesh Dave, Dierk Scheinert, Eric Dippel and Craig Walker, and I might even throw in a few words on CLI myself. Perhaps the most intriguing of the new sessions this year will occur Friday evening, September 12th, at the Inaugural Therapeutic Regenerative CV Medicine Summit, where presentations on gene therapy, angiogenesis, new CV cellular growth, tissue regeneration, bone marrow – stem cell therapy, and cellular tissue biologics and biogenomics will be discussed. I predict many of these new therapies will be delivered percutaneously in the cath lab; therefore, this session would be of great interest to SICP members and all CV healthcare providers. NCVH has been described as the multidisciplinary, multicultural conference that “walks the walk” both clinically and now even economically. Was that your original intention and how has that evolved? Our primary cardiovascular practice group, CIS, was founded 25 years ago with one of the main concepts of cardiovascular treatment being from “head to toe.” This means we developed a multidisciplinary approach towards treating the disease, and over 15 years ago, it became quite obvious that the more disciplines we have involved with patient care, the better the potential outcomes. There really were no other conferences that addressed this need in 1998-1999, and over the last 9 years, we have continued to build on this concept. We have stuck to that theme and therefore, we have truly “walked the walk” of a multidisciplinary conference. For that reason, we have an agenda appropriate for cardiologists, cardiovascular surgeons, endovascular specialists, podiatry, endocrinologists, diabetes specialists, wound care specialists, venous specialists, family physicians, internal medicine, RNs, PAs, nurse practitioners, pharmacology, and naturally all aspects of cath lab professionals. We have grown our conference from humble beginnings of a single-day event with 10 faculty, to now a 4-day event with over 3,500 participants, well over 2 dozen specific medical sessions and a renowned faculty of nearly 150. I suspect that is the reason NCVH has garnered the label of the multidisciplinary conference that truly does “walk the walk.” I guess the multicultural label came several years ago when we began to have international faculty and sessions, the International CLI Summit and sessions endorsed by ISIC (Indo-American Society of Interventional Cardiology) and the ABC (Association of Black Cardiologists). But to me, NCVH has always been multicultural. Louisiana is multicultural. New Orleans in multicultural. CIS is multicultural. CV disease has multicultural disparities. And to me, each discipline, whether cardiology, surgery, podiatry, cath lab professionals, etc., is a unique “culture” in itself, so to me, multidisciplinary has always equaled multicultural. NCVH has always been the multidisciplinary, multicultural conference and now we proudly add “MONOPRICED” to our label. In the “true spirit of education” and as a “sign of our economic times” (have you been to the gas pump lately?) and in an effort to continue to “walk the walk” of a multidisciplinary conference and CME event where we wanted to put all disciplines and attendees on the “same level,” NCVH has created an unprecedented $199.00 monopriced registration rate for all attendees, regardless of their specialty, training or culture. Risky? Yes! But the right thing to do for multidisciplinary CME education in our current healthcare and economic environment. So we look forward to hosting a large SICP contingency in New Orleans this fall at our 9th annual NCVH event. For more information, to register for the conference and/or to submit an abstract please visit the www.newcvhorizons.com or call (337) 261-0944. For more information or to view the full agenda, which includes the ACVP & RCIS review course information, please visit www.newcvhorizons.com/brochure.

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