BSCI/BSCCT 2017 spring meeting took place at Bournemouth Marriot Highcliff Hotel on Thursday 18th and 19th of May 2017.
Scientific abstracts published in Heart
Meeting Report by Dr Jonathan Rodrigues
With the sun shining, a record number of delegates swarmed to the South coast for the 2-day BSCI/BSCCT Spring meeting, organized by Dr Russell Bull and held in Bournemouth.
The meeting kicked off with a highly clinically relevant session with talks from Drs Russell Bull, Gareth Morgan-Hughes, Mark Kon and Jim Stirrup, tackling the challenges that still face CTCA in 2017, how we should optimally report CTCA as well as how we can refine our CT protocols for TAVI work-up. We were given a glimpse into the future of CTCA; ultra-high resolution CT – with isotropic resolution directly comparable with invasive catheter angiography. Dr Alistair Moss rounded up the session with an overview of the work coming from Edinburgh in the assessment of native and prosthetic valve imaging.
There was no chance of a post-prandial slump with the after-lunch session tackling the hottest of topics; the new NICE guidelines for investigation of chronic stable chest pain. Dr James Shambrook and Lizzie Shaw offered pragmatic solutions to help meet the training deficit. The immediate past-president, Dr Ed Nicol, spoke about how NICE “had got it right” but warned of the many challenges still ahead.
Dr Mattias Schmitt and Professor Carl Roobottom then locked horns, debating the optimal first line investigation for patients with intermediate/high likelihood of significant CAD and cardiac sounding chest pain. With likely a combination of type 2 and type 1 thinking, the house voted in favour of anatomical, rather than functional, first line assessment.
Dr Leslee Shaw, SCCT President and Professor of Medicine at Emory University, then delivered the key-note lecture which was a tour-de-force of the future of cardiac CT in multimodality cardiac imaging, reminding us that we need to link the results of a diagnostic investigation directly to guiding treatment decisions in order to improve outcomes.
After an excellent evening of socializing at the conference dinner with both beer and pizza on tap, Friday morning kicked off with the “future of the BSCI/BSCCT session”. Dr Michelle Williams gave an update from the trainee committee and was followed by a series of excellent case presentations and research abstracts from radiology and cardiology trainees. Congratulations to Dr Jonathan Weir-McCall (winner of the best oral presentation), Dr Amardeep Ghosh Dastidar (winner of the best poster presentation), Dr C Fielder (winner of the best case presentation) and Drs Michelle Williams and Alistair Moss (recipients of BSCI/BSCCT research grants).
Dr Simon McGuirk then threw down the gauntlet to Dr Charles Peebles debating CT vs MRI in the assessment of congenital heart disease. Dr Jehangir Din, Consultant Interventional Cardiologist, then gave an overview of how CTCA impacts on his clinical practice. After lunch, there was a whirlwind session of the latest advances in nuclear (Dr Nik Sabharwal), echo (Dr Rick Steeds), CMR (Prof James Moon) and CT (Dr Bobby Agarwal) imaging techniques.
The meeting was brought to a close by the newly appointed BSCI/BSCCT President, Dr Giles Roditi. Following the immense success of BSCI/BSCCT 2017, we look forward to the 2018. Watch this space for further details!
