NEWS FROM BEIJING. CIT 2012 IN PARTNERSHIP WITH TCT

I spend most of last week ( Wednesday - Sunday ) to attend CIT 2012, 10th anniversary meeting. I have been to Beijing yearly for the last 10 years.
This is now probably the largest interventional cardiology meeting in Asia. This year, Prof Gao told me that they registered about 6,000 attendees. There was a large American and Europeans and south American faculty as well as attendees. They reported that last year, China did about 300,000 angioplasty procedures.
This year, besides the usual PCI, stents, bifurcation stenting, left main stem stenting and CTOs, antegrade and retro-grade, they also featured the "Renal Denervation" procedure, and also a significant amount of time was spend on percutaneous repair of structural heart disease, like TAVI.
I must say that I was a bit disappointed when Is aw how they did the Renal Denervation. It was quite painful for the patient, and we are not able to gauge the success of the procedure immediately, as the fall in BP may takes weeks to months, and about 15% are non-responders, making it difficult to gauge success. I was with the Medtronic Asia Pacific VP then and I told him that much more work needs be done.
I had to chair a couple of sessions and the discussions were good. Obviously, even the provicial hospitals are better equipped then our big private hospitals. Thei basic skills are improving fast. They still have a language problem, as they are still not so conversant in English.
Overall, it was a good meeting. I also met many of my old friends, from local and overseas.
Would you believe it. On the day of our departure on the 18th March 2012, it snowed in Beijing.