This year marked the first collaboration between the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and CRF in organizing the i2 Summit, the premier interventional cardiology meeting of the spring.
Several CRF faculty members played active roles in the i2 Summit. George D. Dangas, MD, PhD, served as Co-Chair of the meeting, while Martin B. Leon, MD, Gary S. Mintz, MD, and Gregg W. Stone, MD, were all on the Program Executive Committee. The CRF Meetings and Conventions department also played a key role in collaborating with ACC to develop the organizational and logistical aspects of the meeting.
The four-day conference offered many learning opportunities for surgeons and general cardiologists, beyond its traditional audience of interventionalists.
Much of the success came down to logistics, Dr. Dangas said. The organizers chose a central geographic position in the convention center to make it easier for attendees to move quickly between various sessions. They also tried to facilitate registration. "This year, we had a remarkable increase in joint registration for both the main ACC Scientific Session and the i2 Summit. That allowed people to navigate in and out of each of the meeting’s components without having to reregister," he said.
In addition, efforts were made to ensure that attendees could experience sessions on topics that were outside their specialty. "Even if some of the late breaking trials were too technical for some people, there was a discussion with a panel afterwards that put the studies in context for clinical practice and made them more broadly understandable," Dr. Dangas explained. Similarly, there were wrap-up sessions for live cases with case review videos and a panel to answer questions and "highlight things that attendees may have missed during the fast action of the live case."
Other components of the i2 Summit included oral abstracts and posters, as well as opportunities for physicians to brush up on their skills by learning hands-on techniques and becoming recertified in their field.
