The British Cardiovascular Society Annual Conference, Manchester, 5-7 June 2017: A Message From The Vp For Education And Research

One of the first questions I am asked whenever a forthcoming British Cardiovascular Society (BCS) Annual Conference is being discussed is the proposed ‘theme’ of the meeting. Initially I found this surprising as the main function of the conference, at least as far as the programme committee and I are concerned, is to provide a reasonably comprehensive coverage of the latest developments in all the subspecialist areas of cardiology rather than focus on a particular area. The concept of a theme arose a few years ago as a means of adding interest to the programme and as a stimulus for generation of ideas for novel session titles. The theme needs to be both broad enough to have relevance across the cardiological spectrum and specific enough to grab the attention and interest of potential delegates. This year’s theme ‘Cardiology at the Extremes’ fulfils these requirements well and also opens up more possibilities in terms of exploring the interface between cardiology and aspects of ‘extreme medicine’ which the conference would not normally address.The conference will be opened by the President, Dr Sarah Clarke, followed by the opening lecture ‘Will the right (cardiovascular) stuff get humans to Mars: reflections of a space cardiologist’ delivered by Professor Benjamin Levine (figure 1). Professor Levine has a unique background in space medicine, serving as a coinvestigator on four spacelab missions (SLS-1, SLS-2, D-2 and Neurolab), the MIR space station and recently was the PI of a large cardiovascular experiment on the …