Highlights form ESC 2015

The European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Congress was held in London between August 29 to September 2 this year. The ESC acted as host to more than 32,000 participants including more than 26,000 active delegates and 5000 exhibitors. The spotlight of the congress was 'Environment and the heart' although every topic in Cardiology was covered in depth in addition to this theme. For our colleagues who could not attend, the Turkish Society of Cardiology gave brief excerpts from the congress via periscope twice a day covering the highlights of the day.

There were 536 participants from Turkey in this congress. The submitted number of abstracts from Turkey was 368 and only 92 of them were accepted. Although the overall acceptance rate from all countries was 41%, this did not reflect to acceptance rates from Turkey. The number of accepted abstracts from our country was higher than previous years (last year it was 73 and before that 59), but still not enough considering the number of abstracts submitted and the huge potential of our country. Still, the steady trend to increased number of accepted abstracts from Turkey is promising. There were 17 abstract graders, 11 chairpersons and 9 speakers from Turkey.

For the first time in history of the ESC meeting, the Turkish Society of Cardiology had two scientific sessions. One was entitled 'Implementation of multimodality imaging in the current ESC Guidelines in Turkey - Diabetes' chaired by Prof. Çetin Erol and Prof. Saide Aytekin and the speakers were Assoc. Prof. Levent Sahiner, Prof. Necla Özer, Prof. Elif Sade and Prof. Irem Dinçer. In this session, a case based discussion on imaging in diabetes guidelines and implementation were discussed. The second session was entitled 'Pulmonary Hypertension in Turkey' chaired by Prof. Lale Tokgözoglu and Prof. Serdar Küçükoglu. Prof. Baris Kaya and Assoc. Prof. Cihangir Kaymaz discussed the new 2015 ESC guidelines on pulmonary hypertension adapted to a case. The new pulmonary hypertension guidelines from ESC was one of the most important developments to come out of the congress since it was significantly different from previous guidelines and created a lot of interest and controversy.

During the congress, teams from 7 different countries competed on the topic of ESC guidelines. The Turkish team members were Dilek Ural, Aylin Yildirir, Alper Kepez, Talat Keles, Birhan Yilmaz, Murat Özdemir and Ugur Canpolat. The Turkish team was extremely successful in not only providing all the correct answers but achieving this in record time. A large number of participants from Turkey as well as other countries were present during the quiz session and I would like to congratulate our team for their success and hard work.

One of the most important missions of our Society is to promote and support high quality science in the field of Cardiology. We provide several research grants and awards for this purpose. Our pride and joy during the congress was when Dr. Duygu Koçyigit from Hacettepe University won the Young Investigator Award for the first time with her paper entitled. Enhanced platelet toll-like receptor - 2 and 4 expression in acute coronary syndrome'. In addition, Dr. Ugur Canpolat, also from Hacettepe University was a poster finalist. Dr. Altug Çakmak had 7 posters accepted. I am hoping that this will mark the beginning of an era where we start submitting papers not only in high volume but in high quality. I believe that young Cardiologists from Turkey have a huge potential that will explode in the upcoming years. The Turkish Society of Cardiology will continue to support them with the 'Young Cardiologist' initiative. ESC 2015 was a great success for our Society and members which I predict will be followed by many others in the future.