The directors and organisers of the 26th Charing Cross International Symposium welcome you to this year's meeting, which will tackle the 'challenge of change'.
"Vascular surgery is not as it was and it shall never be the same again," explains Roger Greenhalgh, Programme Chairman. "The change that is taking place can either be faced or feared. It is not just that advances are being made in the endovascular sphere but also laparoscopic techniques are being used. It is too early to know if every trainee will need to learn laparoscopic skills as well as catheter skills."
Greenhalgh continues, "Future vascular specialty recognition will require more than the standard vascular surgery training and this will need to be achieved in a shorter training period. How can this be achieved? It is vital that the whole training programme of vascular surgery and many other specialties should be completely restructured to account for these changes. It should be absolutely fundamental that a specialty should be responsible for its own curriculum, training and standards of examination. This is not to say that the common trunk of training in the generality is unimportant. It is important but this specialist training is what the practitioner is going to practice most of his life and the practitioner of the future in vascular matters will require a much wider range of skills than in the past. This is the challenge that faces vascular surgery at the moment."
During the 2004 Charing Cross Symposium, talks will address such issues as the role of laparoscopy in AAA repair, stent graft design and endoluminal approaches in the thoracic aorta. In addition to the main programme, the EAVST Training Day includes both a revision course for vascular surgeons in training and endovascular hands-on training. Furthermore, two new courses have been added to the symposium. The Vascular Ultrasound Imaging Course provides a comprehensive update on the diagnosis of vascular disease and the inaugral CX Innovation Showcase provides a showcase for emerging technologies.
The Charing Cross International Symposium, the largest and longest running vascular symposium in Europe, each year sees around 1,000 vascular specialists and industry professionals from around the world travelling to Imperial College London to take part in the meeting. The success of the Charing Cross International Symposium is based on clear, educational objectives. It is a masterclass where the audience is almost as knowledgeable as the distinguished world-class faculty.
|
