Thanks to continuing innovations in medical devices and equipments such as Drug-Eluting Stents (DES), remarkable progress has been made in percutaneous intervention and cardiac surgery for the treatment of coronary and peripheral artery diseases and cardiac arrhythmias. To fully realize the potential of such emerging technologies and improve the clinical outcomes, it is essential for us to concomitantly improve our therapeutic strategies and techniques. We must continue to make every effort to establish the procedure of strategies with scientific evidences. However, it is impossible to innovate therapeutic strategies without challenges to develop novel techniques and to conquer unresolved issues.
DES for example has resolved a large number of the restenosis related issues, but questions remain about its true effect on long-term improvement. As the ultimate objective of treatment will always be the improvement of the long-term patient outcomes, we should solve the last remaining issues in PCI, including complete　revascularization of multivessel diseases, chronic total occlusion lesions and so on. We have chosen "The Latest Frontiers" as the theme of our comprehensive live course program at CCT2009, because at CCT, we continue to fight on the front-line of research into coronary heart disease.
The significance of our recent demonstrating live courses is in question, however, we believe what in question is how exactly the strategies on invasive treatment for cardiovascular diseases - especially catheter interventions - should be taught and extended to the wider range of individuals in the interventional community. We feel that the CCT now needs to focus more on what constitutes real and valid education for an operator in the field of cardiovascular disease. Previous CCT meetings have showcased the contemporary limits of catheter intervention by staging live courses designed to show expert operators attempting to exceed and defeat the limits of the day. We strongly believe that this approach has been one of the key roles we have played in the education and nurturing the next generation operators and healthcare professionals.
At CCT2009, we aim to cement our place as pioneers striving towards the latest frontier by staging, in the CCT Coronary program in particular, carefully selected live cases performed by carefully selected expert operators to put on an unrivalled live demonstration course, even more challenging and ambitious than in previous years. We really hope that the content of this year's CCT will make a significant contribution to enhance the education and training of the next generation operators, healthcare professionals and co-medical staffs. We also wish that the CCT live demonstration course can contribute, from our unique vantage point on the front line, searching intelligence to find the last and latest frontier in interventional cardiology. We feel certain that these efforts would enable us to improve and enhance the skills and expertise of the global interventional community.
We look forward to seeing you in Kobe in January.