Third SICVE congress

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Vascular News asked Professor Claudio Novali, Cuneo, the main organizer, to tell us about this year’s initiatives. “For the first time in the history of this society, the organization of this meeting has been given not to a single person, but to a legal body: The Coordination of Vascular Surgeons from Piemonte,” said Novali. “In fact in the Italian region of Piemonte this association, which comprises the head physicians of the most important hospitals in the region, namely Professor Claudio Novali (Cuneo), Dr Mauro Salvini (Alessandria), Dr Brustia Pietro (Novara), Dr Flavio Peinetti (Ivrea), Dr Federico Ponzio (Molinette Hospital, Torino), Professor Alberto Maria Raso (University Hospital Turin), Dr Franco Nessi (Mauriziano Hospital, Turin) and Dr Ferruccio Ferrero (S.Giovanni Bosco Hospital, Turin), promoted this year’s meeting.”

Novali continued: “This initiative started a few years ago, in collaboration with the regional administration, in order to provide visibility to the organization through various activities such as the certification of the regional centers, registry regional activity in order to analyze results and to identify the right treatment for peripheral vascular deseases. It also helps avoid patients moving to other regions to get a better cure.”

All this led to the three-and-half-day SICVE conference, which had more than 1,100 attendees, and was also a huge success with regard to content.

Professor Novali went on: “The congress provided the opportunity to confront different work experiences, trials and presentations, firstly on a national level and then with regard to other countries, through the presence of faculty members from Europe and America.”

During the meeting, 68 lectures were presented from more than 200 sent to the committee. The main issues addressed were those most topical at the moment: open surgery against endovascular treatment, new technologies, debates on trials results. Workshops and symposiums that took place included: How to intervene on carotid lesions, Complications regarding using endovascular procedures on TAA and AAA and also extreme revascularization in critical Ischemia.

The congress also gave all the independent sections of SICVE the chance to express themselves and to present their initiatives. A very interesting one came from the SAF (Independent Section of Phlebology), which looked at new techniques of intervention and new equipment (laser and radiofrequency ablation).

Meetings with different specialties, such as cardiologists, interventional radiologists, anesthetists and neurologists, is a must today. Lectures from eminent representatives from each specialty launched interesting debates among the SIVCE audience. An important meeting with the Italian Stroke Forum, which includes about 25 scientific societies, focused on ictus prevention. Meanwhile, representatives of the French society of vascular surgery arrived to Turin to discuss the benefits of using endovascular devices in treatment of AAA and TAA.

Some SICVE initiatives for 2005 were highlighted as:

  • A registry, to validate the work done in the last years


  • Certification on training, giving the opportunity of organizing more post-graduate courses to cover the existing gap in the formative process
  • SACE’s (the independent section for Endovascular Surgery) main function is to monitor these new procedures in order to make endovascular surgery complementary to normal surgery and not substitutive. SICVE is actively taking part in promoting training and courses on these new techniques, not only for young surgeons but also for who has a long experience in vascular surgery and needs to get updated with this new forms of therapy.

    SICVE President Professor Raimondo Pistolese said, “The importance is of always stimulating interest and imagining what could be done tomorrow be it the traditional option, a mini-invasive solution or the endovascular choice. We are always talking about surgery, what we need to understand is which of them needs be used more of and to what extent?”

    The growing internationality flavor of the SICVE meeting is now characteristic, with a truly world-class faculty from Italy such as Professor Roberto Chiesa, San Raffaele, Milan; Professor Piergiorgio Cao, Perugia; Professor Giorgio Biasi, Milan, and also an international faculty which included Dr Ricco, Poitiers; Dr Favre, St. Etienne; Dr Kretz, Strasburg, on behalf of SCV (Societe de Chirurgie Vasculaire de Langue Francaise).

    Dr Darling, Albany, USA, in his lecture “The Institute for Vascular Health and Disease” highlighted the importance of a better collaboration between vascular surgeons, interventional radiologists and technicians, to optimize the treatment for the patient. A large audience also attended the presentations from Professor Kolvenbach, Dusseldorf, Germany, Dr Moll, Utrecht, Netherlands, and Dr Makaroun, Pittsburgh, USA.

    SICVE comes out from this conference stronger than ever. The two main components of this society, the Academics and the Head Physicians for public and private hospitals have been collaborating together closely not just to organize a more complete congress, but also to give an image of a solid, strong and united society.

    Next year’s SICVE meeting will be held in L’Aquila, Italy, from the September 28 to October 1.