Atlanta, GA - The American College of Cardiology (ACC) is partnering with the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions (SCAI) and the organizers of the existing Intervention200X meeting series to launch a new annual meeting for interventional cardiologists. The meeting, dubbed "Innovation in Intervention: i2 Summit 2006," will take place during the ACC's Annual Scientific Sessions in March 2006.

Intervention2005 has just wrapped up in Las Vegas and New York.

"Next year, rather than a separate meeting, the Intervention meeting will join with the ACC interventional program," i2 Summit 2006 program cochair, Dr Ted Feldman (Evanston Northwestern Hospital, IL) explained to heartwire. "Whereas the ACC interventional program has previously been housed completely within the ACC meeting, what we intend to do is run more of a parallel meeting that will be a complete and comprehensive interventional program, rather than a small part of the ACC program. In addition to the differentiation of the meeting in terms of subject matter, it will also all be geographically together in one part of the convention center."

According to Feldman, the meeting will include case-based teaching and review lectures, as well as late-breaking trials and live cases. "The ACC hasn't had live cases for a few years, and as the evolution of interventional cardiology has remained so dynamic, it's clear that at all of the large meetings there is a benefit from live case transmissions. Far beyond just people liking to watch them, I think they are really an important part of the education format of the meetings."

There is always room to make our meetings better, and we have growing educational needs, so we're trying to make a meeting that will satisfy more of those needs.

The other program cochairs include Dr William O'Neill (Beaumont Hospitals, Troy, MI), representing the ACC, and Dr William Knopf (Saint Joseph's Hospital, Atlanta, GA), representing Intervention200X.

Asked whether the ACC perceived a need to coax interventional cardiologists back to the annual scientific sessions after the increase in popularity and scope of specialized interventional meetings such as ISET and TCT, Feldman pointed out that the ACC program has always attracted interventional cardiologists and featured important interventional content.

"I don't know that people have drifted away; I think that people go to different meetings for different reasons," Feldman said. "The number of interventional physicians who attend these meetings in my understanding has always been substantial. I think a large number of interventionalists also practice general cardiology, so part of what they get at ACC, they don't get at other meetings."

He emphasized that the i2 Summit has at its core a successful, albeit smaller, meeting. "I personally don't see this as competitive [with other interventional cardiology conferences]. There is always room to make our meetings better, and we have growing educational needs, so we're trying to make a meeting that will satisfy more of those needs."