20 October, 2008: Day 2 of the Congress

I was scheduled to give two talks today. They went reasonably well although it’s hard to know how many people understood. I did get some good questions especially after the second talk (Anticoagulation for Acute Coronary Syndromes). For this Congress, speakers were asked to provide 2-3 talks of their choice and the organizing committee then created a program. Unfortunately, this ended up resulting in a lot of redundant talks. In fact, Franz van derWerf, editor-in-chief of the European Heart Journal gave the exact same talk as me just one hour earlier. I sat on the panel for his talk and he for mine. During my time at the conference I sat on three panels which allowed me to meet leading cardiologists from Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, and Belgium; all countries which I would very much like to visit.

I also finally got a chance to meet Prof. Vang Chu, the head of the Laotian Heart Institute that I missed in Vientiane last week. He’s in the process of creating a cardiology fellowship program and is quite interested in bringing us over to participate in a teaching program. He feels that language skills, especially English, will be very important for Laotian cardiologists. I can think of quite a few people from my days in Boston, San Francisco, Emory, and the desert that would bring a lot to this kind of a program.

In the evening we joined the other conference attendees at a “gala culture night” celebrating the Congress. There was song and dance competition amongst the different countries. I got to join the spirited Vietnamese delegation which was really fun but which might explain our finishing out of the medals. The Philippine contingent took first followed by Malaysia and Indonesia.

On to Ho Chi Minh City in the morning with Anthony Demaria and Charlie...