Thank you very much for your continued kindness towards the CCT.
Also, we would like very much to thank the many participants from overseas last year, mainly Asia, as well as Japan.

Having started in 2001, the CCT will be celebrating its 15th anniversary this year. Please let me introduce the origin briefly today.
The predecessor of the CCT is the CCIC, which started in 1995. Its predecessor is the Naka-Nihon Live Demonstration, which started in 1993. This live course was based on a meeting called Osaka Intervention Meeting that started in an extremely local area in Japan. However, our stance from the beginning to the CCIC and CCT has always been "For the patients" and the methodology is "Live demonstration". Regardless of the size of meetings, there is always a fundamental stance to pursue better therapy for patients with participants through live treatments called "Unencapsulated truth". It is impossible to fully convey it to participants with texts, lectures, and video live demonstrations.

While it is important to keep our stance, it is also important to be flexible in changing "for the patients" as times change. The changing times include not only conviction of devices and technologies but also new evidence that will appear one after another, and the change of socio-economic environment surrounding the global society. Therefore, we can say that what we need now is "Change".

Let's take CTO treatment as an example. With the steadfast efforts of pioneers over more than 20 years and the conviction of innovative devices accompanying it, fairly theoretical techniques have been established now and these techniques have been spread globally. As you know, CTO cases are also one of the highlights of live demonstration in the CCT. However, "What we can do" and "What we should do" are different. You can never say "For the patients" if you do "not see the wood for the trees". We think that this year will be the time to think, again, about the adaptation of CTO treatment for the patients.

We think that "change of generation" is also extremely important. We have to hand down the technology and spirit that we inherited from CCT pioneers to the next generation. We are convinced that it will be for future patients.

We, all of the course directors, are going to explore possibilities in order for participants to feel the "Change" at all venues as well as in the live demonstration halls, and we appreciate your cooperation.
We are looking forward to seeing you in Kobe when the leaves of the trees start to color.