For the past few years, the International Society of Endovascular Specialists (ISES) Night of Honours has recognised one endovascular professional for his or her outstanding achievements in the field of endovascular interventions. In 2002, it was the turn of Julio Palmaz. However, during its 10th anniversary year, ISES put this tradition on hold to pay tribute to the founders of the society, who met in Bordeaux 10 years ago. Each one of these founding members was honoured. Frank Criado, who is the secretary of ISES, paid tribute to the leadership of Ted Diethrich, “We would not have been here without the shining star.”The event provided an opportunity for a lot of humour. Each of the founding members was asked a series questions to determine who actually was responsible for the founder of the society. They resoundingly failed to get a single point and therefore Rodney White, current ISES President, was crowned king. His reign, however, was short-lived. It was only a matter of five minutes after his investiture before Tom Fogarty, the ISES president-elect, declared that he in fact was king and “stole”the robes from Rod White and proceeded to dance to the music. It was, as you can see, a very light-hearted evening with a video tribute to the positive contribution made by the ISES, interspersed with clips from a re-edit of the film “10, which instead of starring Dudley Moore now featured Tom Fogarty, looking somewhat worse for wear, as he ran towards the beautiful Bo Derek. The evening was compared by a David Letterman look-alike who found himself in the Arizona Heart Institute, under the care of a slightly mad-looking Wolf Stelter, who seemed to follow him around both in reality and in his dreams, and apparently in his bedroom.
On a more serious note, Ted Diethrich highlighted that the ISES had proven that there was a benefit for a close link with industry and academia. ISES is continuing to build bridges with all the key stakeholders. Diethrich said: “We have proven that there is a new venue, there is a new opportunity at least in the US for academic people to deal with the highest people in terms of regulation to dispense products for common benefit.”He paid tribute to Rod White by saying, ” I believe that this society under Rod White’s leadership sets forward a new paradigm for new devices for appropriate application.”This referred to the CARESS study, which brought together three different stakeholders, the manufactures, the society and academia, as well as the FDA who participated in the discussion about the optimum trial design. More about the CARESS study will appear in future issues of Vascular News.
