With new Australian guidelines to be launched, a record number of abstracts, and more than 20 international invited speakers, the 66th Annual Scientific Meeting of the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand (CSANZ) in Brisbane from 2 August will feature the very best and latest in medical science and clinical practice.
As the Australian and New Zealand Endovascular Therapies (ANZET) Meeting is running concurrently for the first time, the interventional stream has been deleted from CSANZ 2018 and replaced by a single session on Sunday 5 August.
Associate Professor John Atherton, chair of the CSANZ 2018 Scientific Program Committee, told the limbic the change would be more efficient for everyone.
“So what we are doing this year is we are going to have a whole session in the main program, as opposed to a whole stream over two and a half days, devoted to interventions as an update for the general cardiologist.”
Associate Professor Atherton said two National Heart Foundation Australia / CSANZ guidelines – on heart failure and atrial fibrillation – were being launched at the meeting.
“We’ve never had atrial fibrillation guidelines in Australia, so this is a first,” he said (Friday 3 August, 5pm).
The heart failure guidelines, which Associate Professor Atherton chaired and will present, are a substantial update on the previous 2011 guidelines.
Following his presentation, Professor Andrew Coats (Monash and Warwick Universities) and Professor Javed Butler (University of Mississippi) will provide the respective European and US perspectives on the guidelines (Saturday 6 August, 10.30am).
“There are some things that are different and some of them have already attracted attention. Probably the biggest one is that we haven’t gone down the European path of having a mid-range ejection fraction.”
An executive summary of the guidelines will be published concurrently in the Medical Journal of Australia and the full guidelines in Heart, Lung and Circulation.
Amongst the many named lectures on the program, the prestigious RT Hall lecture will be presented by Professor John Cleland – a renowned cardiologist with an interesting in heart failure from the UK (Friday, 9am).
Other international speakers include:
- Professor John Rumsfeld: How can big data help cardiology? (Fri, 2pm)
- Professor Perry Elliott: Inherited cardiac disease – what’s new? (Sat, 1.30pm)
- Professor Tom Karl: What’s hot in paediatrics? (Sun, 10am)
The Ralph Reader Prize will be held over two sessions – during the opening session for the three basic science finalists (Fri, 9-10.30am) and after the Kempson Maddox Lecture for the three clinical finalists. (Saturday, 8.30-10am)
Associate Professor Atherton said many of the oral presentations will be delivered in the popular mini-oral format on Friday and Saturday.
The program also includes some debates such as one on left atrial appendage occlusion (LAAO) in the arrhythmia stream (Friday, 12-12.20pm).
“LAAO is a device that has recently had MSAC approval for public funding for relatively restricted indications but there is actually debate as to whether it is too generous or too restrictive.”
“Some clinicians think it should never have been supported – this is going to break the budget or the evidence isn’t that strong – and others say we need this and the government should have allowed it to be available to a wider group of patients.”
CSANZ 2018 also includes a Wellness Walk along both banks of the Brisbane River (Sat, 7-8am) and an Evening at the Queensland Art Gallery (Saturday, 5.30-8pm).
The meeting will be held at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre from 2-5 August.
Photo credit: Tourism & Events Queensland