Dear friends, members of AEPC

At the Business Meeting in Granada in May, 2011, the name of the Association was changed to Association for European Paediatric and Congenital Cardiology (Association Europeenne De Cardiologie Pediatrique Et Congenitale) in order to emphasise that the field of interest of Association for European Paediatric and Congenital Cardiology is congenital, as well as paediatric cardiology. The abbreviation and logo, however, remain unchanged. The amended constitution is now available on the website (www.aepc.org) and can be accessed via the pull-down menu “Constitution, committees and working groups” or from a link on the right column. The minutes of the Business Meeting 2011 are located under “Documents and minutes”. The proceedings from the Update on Intervention held in Granada, 2011 are in the process of publication in this journal.

Payment of the annual fee can be made directly on the web page. The deadline for payment is March 31, 2012, after which a late payment fee of 10 Eu will be added. Membership in one of the working groups is free. You are very welcome to join additional working groups, but please pay an extra 10 Eu for each additional working group and contact the treasurer Professor Joerg Stein (joerg.stein@i-med.ac.at) to inform him about which of the working groups you have paid for.

The 46th Annual Meeting will be held in Istanbul, May 23–26, 2012. The teaching course on Wednesday, May 23 will be arranged by the Fetal Working Group. The two main plenary sessions are “Emerging Management Strategies for Neonatal Cardiac Emergencies” and a joint session between Association for European Paediatric and Congenital Cardiology and JSPSCC (Japanese Society for Paediatric Cardiology and Paediatric Cardiac Surgery): “Persistent Arterial Trunk – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”. The Young Investigator Award was first held last year and will be repeated in 2012 as this attracted a lot of interest and was successful. This year, the Young Investigator Award will be chaired by Dr Jan Marek. More information, including the link to the registration, is available at www.aepc2012.org. We look forward to meeting you there!

As we have informed previously, several elections to the council will take place at the Business Meeting. The names of the candidates nominated by the council were announced in the previous newsletter. The deadline for the votes in the ballot to reach the Secretary-General is May 10.

The Annual Meetings in 2013 and 2014 will take place in London and Helsinki, respectively. For the Annual Meeting in 2015, three countries have put forward their proposals, the Czech Republic, Greece, and Italy. The final decision will be made during the Business Meeting in Istanbul, and we will provide you with more information regarding the three candidates beforehand.

During spring, two courses will be arranged by the working groups of the Association for European Paediatric and Congenital Cardiology. The “Association for European Paediatric and Congenital Cardiology course on cardiac catheterisation and interventions” is arranged by the Interventional Working Group on March 23–24 in Barcelona, and the “Basic Course of Echocardiography” will be arranged by the Imaging Working Group in collaboration with the working group morphology in Padova, April 11–15, 2012.

The next “World Congress of Pediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery” will take place in Cape Town, South Africa, February 17–22, 2013. The web page is now open at http://wcpccs2013.co.za/. Registration as “super early bird” is possible until May 31, 2012.

All contacts from our members, for questions or discussions, are highly appreciated and most welcome. The mail address of the Secretary-General is Katarina.hanseus@telia.com and is also available on the website.

Shak Qureshi Katarina Hanseus

President AEPC Secretary General