Atenção à educação continuada de qualidade

Abstract

Now entering my ninth month at the head of our Brazilian Society of Cardiology (SBC), it is with great enthusiasm that I am inaugurating this section in the Arquivos Brasileiros de Cardiologia. The moment could not have been more opportune as it coincides with the 63rd edition of the Brazilian Congress of Cardiology.When I assumed the office of president, in my first message to my fellow members -at that time in the Journal SBC -I also assumed, together with all the other members of SBC's current board, the responsibility of prioritizing our focus on top quality continuing education. It is my belief that ensuring the spread of knowledge at the same time as we encourage scientific production is one of the main tasks of societies of specialties in our time.The initiatives featuring this purpose are various. Among them is renewal of the recycling courses that guaranteed the offer of homogeneous training to all of the SBC regional divisions. Naturally, the yearly congress is the most outstanding of these initiatives. Even before it takes place I am confident in stating that this year's congress will be the greatest scientific forum our society has ever organized.There will be 30 conferences -17 international and 13 Brazilian -a close-to-equal division that pays homage to the scientific track record of Brazilian researchers. In addition we will have 49 round-tables, 29 colloquiums, 37 "How I do it" sessions, two clinical cases, 41 controversies, 28 curricular up-dates, plus 13 special and 65 free topic oral sessions, all of which add up to 660 presentations and three days of free topic poster presentations, including four special sessions featuring the best of the poster presentations.Dr. Venentin Fuster, specialized in atherosclerosis -the central topic of the 63 rd Congress -will give the opening speech and the keynote speech. The subject was not a random choice: atherosclerosis is a chronic degenerative condition that registers what are considered to be epidemic levels of incidence in first and third world countries and thus exerts a major epidemiological impact.