EDITORIAL

ESC Congress 2004: national scientific contributions Together with this November issue of the Netherlands Heart Journal,

a special supplement will appear with the most important scientific contributions ofthe European Society of Cardiology's 2004 Congress in Munich. In this supplement the three hotline sessions will be discussed, the most interesting main sessions, and the most important satellite sessions. Apart from these scientific contributions, it might also be worthwhile to look more specifically at the contributions ofthe individual nations to the ESC Congress 2004. To that purpose, we analysed the numbers of the national contributions to presentations and sessions ofthe top 15 countries. Table 1 shows national involvement in the absolute number of presentations and sessions per country in ranking order. It can clearly be seen that Germany is the greatest contributor followed by Italy, the United Kingdom, Unites States and France. The Netherlands takes the sixth position which is quite remarkable for a small country such as ours. Furthermore, four non-European countries are induded in the 15 countries with the highest contributions, with the US in the first place followed by Japan, Israel and Canada. Also noteworthy is the prominent position of Poland (number 9).

900

N00

t

~~~u

700~

500

~~~~~472 413

400300200

100

237 ~~~~~~~2-37

234

-

0

0

9

109

97

0

DE: Germany; IT: ftaly GB: Great Britain; US: United States; FR: Rance; NL: Netherands; ES: Spain; CH: Switzerand; PL: Poand; BE: Belgiun; GR: Greece; SE: Sweden; FP: Japan; IL: Israel; Ck CanadJa.

Figure 1. Presentations and sessionsduringESC Meeting2004, absolute numbers per count,y. Table 2 shows the division into absolute number of presentations (posters, oral abstracts) and the absolute number of sessions (hotline sessions, main sessions, focus sessions, etc.) For the number of presentations a similar pattern can be observed as that presented in table 1, whereas this pattern differs for the national involvement in sessions (Germany first, followed by France, United States, and the Netherlands in fourth place).

Nabedn Heart Journal, Volume 12, Number 11, Novcrber 2004

489

~ .pr e,

Editonal

~~~~01 d S

POSM

3,.

a:

NO:

. .:.:.. .:4..;!'". '...'.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~...::.

900 850

800 700 614 600-

501

500

48

387

400

White bars: Presentations

357

Black bars: Sessions 300-

1L92 .920 168

9

200-210

............

."~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~........ .

'' P*lk

0."

'.::

H**:*00 *1

*bj^b&M'sfWo ,iilp

Alon. *

108

R8H

IT

:24

47

GB

US

FR

NL56

ES

CH

4~1 PL

33

40

BE

GR

SE

JP

89ILL2 87[LCA

DE: Germany; IT: Italy; GB: Great Britain; US: United States; FR: France; NL: Netherlands; ES: Spain; CH: Switzerland; PL: Poland; BE: Belgium; GR: Greece; SE: Sweden; JP: Japan; IL: Israel; CA: Canada.

Figure2. Presentations and sessiosduingESC Meeting2004,

absolute numbers

per country.

.:

_X

.f_...'.~...

DE

:hW::b

Table 3 shows the presentations and sessions per million inhabitants per country. The pattern then naturally changes in favour of the smaller countries: Switzerland takes the lead with the Netherlands in second place, followed by Sweden, Belgium, Greece and Israel.

......'., ..''.-'..:.:.

. .-

22.0 20.4 18.2

M,,^e:.................:

.4.....

:

.... .w :.......:

. ahEf,,.Z.,

120ll7

:.:: ::

..

~~.vd_ ., ...

.

Im .v-Zw

: ..

I.1..1.1.1 1~ 9. CH

NL

SE

BE

GR

IL

IT

DE

GB

Fm

ES

Pt

CA

US

JP

DE: Gemay; IT: itatl; GB: Greet Britain; US: United Staes; FR: France; NL: Netherlands; ES: ; PL: Poland; BE: Belaum; GR: Greeoce; SE: Sweden; JP: Japan; IL: Israel; Spah; CH: 9 CA Canada.

Figure 3. Presentations and sessions during ESC Meeting 2004, per million inhabitants/per country.

To summarise, in the absolute sense, there is major scientific involvement of the larger European countries such as Germany, the UK, France and Italy in the annual ESC meeting, but in a relative sense the smaller countries contribute greatly to the ESC meetings (Switzerland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Belgium, Greece and Israel), indicating that the ESC meetings have (more and more!) major affinity for a wide spectrum of nations. E.E. van der Wall, ChiefEditor Netherlands HeartJournal, Department of Cardiology, Leiden University Medical Centre, Leiden.

490

Netherlands Heart Journal, Volume 12, Number 11, November 2004