By the time you read this message, the annual meeting of the European Association for Paediatric Cardiology will have been held in Warsaw, and hopefully will have been a huge success. As I write this Newsletter, however, I have only just returned from the Annual Heart Week in Florida, which we discussed in the Newsletter that is about to appear in the April Issue,1 So as to achieve timely publication of the Journal, we now have a significant lag between the submission of items such as this, and the Newsletter from the European Association, and the appearance of the Issue carrying the submitted copies. This is an unfortunate, but necessary, consequence of our drive to have the Journal appear in your hands as early as possible in its month of publication. It is, of course, now possible to access all the scientific articles awaiting publication in their electronic form. Even with the advent of incremental publishing, however, when appearance of the manuscript in our “Forthcoming articles” section counts as the definitive date of publication, there will still be a lag between the time of writing and the time of appearance of articles such as this message. Those reading the journal, therefore, must permit those of us preparing these news items a degree of poetic license as we try to predict the future events. With this in mind, the officers of the European Association chose to forego their production of the Newsletter for this Issue. They hope to bring you an account of their annual meeting in the August Issue.
With the topics discussed above in mind, I am pleased to report that the prognostications concerning “Heart Week in Florida” were more than fulfilled. I have now had the privilege to be invited to these events over the past 5 years. For those of you who may still be ignorant concerning the content of “Heart Week”, it comprises an outstanding educational symposium organised by All Children's Hospital and the Congenital Heart Institute of Florida at St Petersburg, and an increasingly large and impressive meeting arranged by Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. I have witnessed both of these events gain in prestige and stature over the past 5 years. The events this year provided the very best possible in continuing professional education for all of those concerned with diagnosis and treatment of children with congenitally malformed hearts. It is the multi-disciplinarity of the meetings that is one of their major attractions. Being held in sunny Florida in February, the meetings provide an opportunity for all those attending to mingle for the outstanding scientific content, provided by carefully chosen, but World-class, faculties. They can also enjoy the multiple social events that reinforce the science. Next year, the meeting organised by Children's Hospital of Philadelphia will return to Phoenix, where it will take place immediately following the Superbowl, also to be held in Phoenix, and the Phoenix Open Golf Tournament. This event can be strongly recommended. If all goes according to plan, the meeting for 2009 will be held in the Bahamas, the organisers deciding, perhaps, that the attendees have now seen enough of Disneyworld in Orlando! The meetings organised by All Children's Hospital and the Congenital Heart Institute of Florida will continue to be hosted in St Petersburg, but these may move to a new venue, namely the excellent Vinoy Hotel. The organisers of the ongoing Florida leg of Heart Week will continue to arrange their event so that those attending the leg organised by Children's Hospital of Philadelphia can, if they choose, combine the two meetings.
All of these matters should be of interest to the readers of “Cardiology in the Young”, since it is the content of these meetings that has provided the substance for our recent supplements. We are expecting to produce another supplement in September that will encapsulate the very best of the material presented at the meetings held this year. My colleagues Jeff Jacobs, Bill Gaynor, and Gil Wernovsky are currently doing their utmost to ensure that the selected authors deliver their reviews in timely fashion. I can confidently predict that the material to be reviewed will be of the highest standard, since this year, the quality of all the lectures was outstanding. Those of you who are interested, by the time you receive this Issue, should also have access to the abstracts of a selection of the material presented in February in Orlando, and all of the abstracts of the presentations at the inaugural meeting of the World Society for Pediatric and Congenital Heart Surgery, which by the time you receive this Issue of the Journal should have been held in Washington, District of Columbia. The instructions for access to these electronic-only supplements were provided on the inside front cover of the April Issue of the Journal. For those of you who may have missed these items, the supplements can be reached through our website at www.journals.cambridge.org/CTY. We hope that you will all take the opportunity to study this material, including as it does details of the new World Society for Pediatric and Congenital Heart Surgery.
Another important event that will occur in September of this year will be the retirement of the Editor-in-Chief. We are organising a “Retirement Symposium” for September 26 though 28, which will be presented by those with whom I have worked most closely during my career. Details are available from the Conference Office at the Institute of Child Health at <www.ichevents.com>. I am not hanging up my “shooting boots” completely, since I hope to continue my researches into cardiac development, and also to spend more time in the United States of America, Canada, and Australia. At this stage, however, these plans are in the formative stage, as are those for the ongoing editorial management of the Journal. The Editorial team will have met during the most recent version of “Cardiology of the Young”, held at the Institute of Child Health in London in April. In the August issue of the Journal, we hope to provide details of the future arrangements.
