TCT.13: 12K expected for silver anniversary
This year’s Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) conference is expected to draw approximately 12,000 attendees, said co-director Gregg W. Stone, MD, at a press conference. The figure is on par with 2012’s final attendance.
Stone highlighted key features for the 25th anniversary event, which is scheduled for Oct. 27-Nov. 1 in San Francisco. He listed special programs celebrating TCT’s silver anniversary, the debut of “TCT Goes Tablet” and more than 2,000 presentations and abstracts among the standouts for 2013.
The conference will include nine late-breaking clinical trials plus a dozen first report investigations. “This is probably the strongest series of late-breaking clinical trials that we’ve received,” said Stone, who is also co-director of the division of medical research and education at the Cardiovascular Research Foundation (CRF), a professor at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and director of cardiovascular research and education at the Center for Interventional Vascular Therapy at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center, all in New York City. The CRF produces TCT in partnership with the American College of Cardiology.
TCT Goes Tablet provides all paying attendees with a tablet computer that will allow them to plot their agendas, review the program, gain access to slides, search topics and keywords and communicate using an app with colleagues. It includes a chat room option for participants to discuss sessions in real time, with a moderator monitoring the discussion.
“It is our first salvo at redefining the conference experience for the attendees,” he said. “We expect this to grow over time.”
As part of the celebrations, organizers will present a career achievement award that Stone describes as “in the spirit of the 25th anniversary of TCT.”
A list of late-breaking clinical trials is available here. Cardiovascular Business will be reporting and posting clinical trial findings and other TCT news on site.