The introduction of drug-eluting stents (DES) in percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) has clearly been a very significant development in the treatment of ischemic heart disease. A large proportion of patients previously indicated for bypass surgery, such as some left-main disease patients and patients with triple-vessel disease or other complex lesion types, are now being successfully treated using the minimally-invasive techniques permitted by PCI. This is not of course to say that CTOs and bifurcation lesions at least can always be vanquished by DES alone or that major issues pertaining only to DES such as late stent-thrombosis do not remain, but despite these issues, few people doubt that PCI will continue to develop and evolve with DES playing a key and central role.

Since its inception the CCT (Coronary) has seen as its principal challenge the development of PCI for complex lesion subsets (such as CTOs, triple-vessel disease, left-main disease). CCT2008 will remain faithful to this policy to ensure that we continue to extract the maximum benefit from DES. But as will be apparent from the theme of this year's meeting, "Beyond DES", relying on drug-eluting stents alone is not enough. We need to ensure we continue to look for and identify the best possible and most up-to-date PCI treatments for our complex lesion patients.

As in recent years the official language of the meeting will be English so as to facilitate real and lively discussion and debate between both our home-grown Japanese and overseas participants, while the inclusion in the program once more of a truly "world-class" live case demonstration course with cases from a number of countries in Asia, and from Europe and the US will, we hope, continue the CCT's proud tradition of exploring and identifying new state-of-the-art global standards for PCI.

Another feature of CCT2008 will be the continuing attention paid not just to PCI for ischemic heart disease but to intervention in the carotid and peripheral vessels. We also demonstrate our commitment to our Electrophysiology and Surgical courses by making both bigger and better than before. Our CCT Peripheral Course will be based on live case demonstrations but with a broader, more global remit compared to last year, while the aim of the Surgical Course will be to move far beyond the confines of coronary bypass surgery to introduce and expand on the very latest cardiovascular surgical therapies. The focus of this year's Electrophysiology Course will as before be on the development of practical expertise, with the emphasis once again very much on the live cases.

CCT2008 will be the largest international cardiology meeting ever to take place in Asia. This fact fills us with a sense of pride and also of responsibility. We are determined to make this a meeting where meaningful international exchange is readily possible, to provide a forum where attendees from every country can communicate freely and easily, the perfect environment for participants to exchange ideas and learn from each other's experience. In this way, we hope that CCT2008 will make its own contribution to the further development of the vital clinical therapies leading the world-wide fight against ischemic heart disease and the other cardiovascular diseases.