This year’s Congress of the European Society of Cardiology ( ESC ) was held from 31 August to 4 September in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The third day of the Congress, that is September 2, was a session organized by the Centre for Rare Cardiovascular Diseases in the John Paul II Hospital in Krakow in the project ” Establishment of the European Network of Cooperation in the so-called Cardiac Orphan Diseases “. Our session took place in the Village 6 in Vienna Hall from 13:00 to 13:45. The session was approved by the ESC Congress Programme Committee and was listed both in print and online. During the session we hosted over 170 participants, including a number of experts of international standing.
Together with world-class specialist heart failure – Professor John Cleland from University of Hull, UK our session was leaded by Dr. Pawel Rubis from the Centre. The session program included as follows: first came out our Center Director – Professor Piotr Podolec , who presented a short speech being developed by the Team Classification of Rare Cardiovascular Diseases. Then a world-class heart surgeon, a partner of the Centre – Professor Ottavio Alfieri from San Raffaele Hospital in Milan gave a lecture on the specificity of cardiac surgery in rare cardiovascular diseases, referring presented cases to the classification of the Centre. Another point of the session were presentation of two clinical cases by three – person teams of experts from our Centre, as well as the Centers Partners. The first case of a pregnant woman with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy was presented by Dr. Lidia Tomkiewicz – Pajak, and expert commentary was delivered by Prof. Sabine Pankuweit from Marburg, Germany and Dr. Deddo Moertl from St. Pölten , Austria. The second case, presented by Prof. Andrzej Gackowski concerned the procedure in a patient with tetralogy of Fallot. Expert comments were made by Prof. Egle Ereminine from Kaunas, Lithuania and Dr. Jakub Podolec from the Centre. At the end of session Dr. Grzegorz Kopec – Deputy Director of the centre, outlined Rare Disease Registry conducted by the Centre. Each participant also received an exemplar of book – ” Rare Cardiovascular Diseases: from Classification to Clinical Examples “.