EDITORIAL

National Cardiac Meetings—What’s Wrong?

The recent meeting of the American Heart Asso-ciation (AHA) in Los Angeles had an attendanceof only 17 000. The days of the American HeartAssociation meetings when attendance wasbetween 30 000 and 35 000 are long gone. Just acouple of years ago, the attendance had dropped tobetween 22 000 and 23 000 and was even less thisyear. Other national cardiac meetings, includingthe American College of Cardiology (ACC), havealso seen a significant decrease in the number ofattendees, so it begs the question: What’s wrongwith the national cardiac meetings, and what istheir future?

One of the reasons for the decline in the meet-ings is the international economy. It is clear whenone walks around the AHA and the ACC that ourinternational colleagues are coming to the meet-ings in fewer numbers than they did a number ofyears ago, particularly the group from Asia andparticularly Japan. Given the status of the Euro-pean economy, the European cardiology contin-gent is also much less evident at or nationalmeetings. The state of the world economy is also aproblem for those of us in the United States whowant to go to meetings far outside our boundaries.This year, the World Congress of Pediatric Car-diology will be held in Cape Town. Cape Town isa long trip from the United States and is veryexpensive. If one is going to make that longjourney, most people would try to add some addi-tional days to do some fun things around CapeTown and southern South Africa such as photo-graph safaris, etc. and that adds to the cost signifi-cantly. My prediction is that the numbers ofattendees at the world congress in February 2013will be lower than it has been in the past, given thestate of the economy.

The other issue is that medical institutions arefinancially supporting travel of their academic staffto a significantly less degree than they have in thepast. Many people travel because of the generosityof their institutions in regards to funding theirtrips, even if they were not speakers or panelmembers. Those days appear to be long gone.

Unless one has an original contribution or is amember of a senior panel or study group, theability to travel, ad hoc, to medical meetings hasdisappeared. Even financially strong institutionssuch as the Cleveland Clinic have reduced theirstaff travel, and only if one is presenting an origi-nal paper or abstract can one go to the meetingand then the total time that one is at the meetingis significantly limited.

Another issue for decreased attendance atnational meetings is the growth of subspecialtymeetings around the country. Many sub-subspecialists in pediatric cardiology are moreexcited to attend their national meeting in electro-physiology or interventional cardiology than go tothe big national meetings. The material at thesenational sub-subspecialty meetings is more focusedand deals directly with the sub-subspecialty issuesfor the practitioner. Most of the attendance at thesemeetings is quite good but that is certainly takingaway attendance from the broader-based nationalmeetings like the AHA and the ACC.

The other meeting that has taken a volume ofattendance away is a meeting like the CHOPmeeting, organized by Gil Wernovsky in Philadel-phia. This has become an outstanding meetingwith a broad-based venue and usually is held invery nice geographic surroundings. The broad-based diversity of this meeting clearly appeals tomany cardiologists, nurses, etc. who would nor-mally go to national meetings but would prefer togo to the CHOP meeting instead.

Finally, the content of the AHA and the ACChas changed over the last number of years. It isextremely difficult for anyone in congenital heartdisease to actually have an oral presentation at theACC. Almost all the congenital cardiac presenta-tions are posters. The days when that meeting wasan excellent venue for oral presentation with com-mentary have decreased dramatically and peopleare less interested in presenting posters. The AHAhas gotten so big and broad-based that frequently,the meetings of the pediatric cardiology sectionare so far removed from the rest of the adult ses-

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© 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Congenit Heart Dis. 2013;8:1–2

sions in terms of their geographic location thatyou almost feel like you are in a different state.

I don’t know what is going to happen to thefuture of our national meetings, particularly theAHA meeting. Unless the world economyimproves or academic centers get more funding,the attendance, I think, will continue to decline.Most of us feel the need to attend our sub-subspecialty meetings and I think those meetingswill continue to be successful as they offer what thesub-subspecialist needs in a very focused way. Itmay be that in the future we have no more largenational meetings, but I think that would be a loss

because those meetings still fulfill the need for usto get together from all over the country to sharediverse knowledge in pediatric cardiac disease anddo that in a national forum. The future of ournational cardiac meetings is not clear, but it wouldbe a shame to lose the legacy of outstanding sci-entific contributions that have come throughgetting together on a national scale.

Douglas Moodie, MD, MSPediatric Cardiology

Baylor College of Medicine Texas Children’s Hospital,Houston, TX, USA

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Congenit Heart Dis. 2013;8:1–2