Stroke, breast cancer detection, sports medicine – the clinical programme is an impressive illustration of this year’s congress theme: Radiology is diversity. Florian Schneider asked the joint congress Presidents, Professor Bernd Hamm (Berlin) and Professor Walter Hruby (Vienna) to highlight the major topics at this, the largest medical imaging event (attendance around 7,000) in the…
The role of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) in prostate cancer detection continued to command attention at during the annual congress of the European Association of Urology (EAU) in March.
This April the 77th Annual Meeting of the German Cardiac Society (DGK) presented over 300 events with 1,800 speakers, covering the entire spectrum of cardiovascular diseases, from fundamental research to clinical routine. Professor Gerd Hasenfuss, Director of the Department of Cardiology and Pulmonology and Chair of the Heart Research Centre in Gottingen, particularly requested a focus on …
Bayer HealthCare announced that the company will present preclinical data that introduce investigational compounds for both therapy and imaging in its early oncology pipeline with unique and novel mechanisms at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) 102nd Annual Meeting, April 2-6, 2011, in Orlando, FL.
The eleventh annual IHE European Connectathon set for Pisa, Italy from April 11th to 15th, 2011 has rapidly expanded to a week-long program of activities that is attracting a critical mass of engineers and executives responsible for advancing e-health in Europe.
This is the claim made by Dr Paula Meier during event discussions in the lead up to Medela’s 6th International Breastfeeding and Lactation Symposium (Amsterdam, 15-16 April 2011). Although the benefits of human milk for infants in neonatal intensive care units is widely accepted, there has been a lack of focus on how to encourage and support mothers of preterm infants to stimulate and…
Penetrating insights, intensive discussions and an informal atmosphere – these are the hallmarks that make the European Society of Thoracic Imaging (ESTI) so special, according to Professor Hans- Ulrich Kauczor, Medical Director of the Department of Diagnostic Radiology at the University Hospital Heidelberg and this year’s ESTI meeting President. In 2011 ESTI’s American (USA) ‘cousin’,…
Vienna - For the 23rd time, the European Congress of Radiology (ECR) is opening its doors to welcome 19,000 participants from over 90 countries. The scientific exchange of knowledge and the presentation of the latest developments in the field of radiology will again be presented right in the heart of Europea. In an inaugural press conference on March 3rd, the hot topics of the congress were…
A major gathering of medical specialists presents not only a perfect time to summarise the status-quo but also to assess the role of the specialty in the future. This year’s European Society of Radiology Congress aims to reach far into radiological horizons by launching attendees into a radiological setting in the year 2025. ECR 2011 will also enter the 5th dimension of CT.
Although developments in molecular imaging still do not reach the high expectations placed upon them, the change in imaging is very obvious. Having been limited to the imaging of morphology, nowadays information on tissue characteristics, blood vessels or the metabolic behaviour of tumours provide many more insights, for example into response behaviour.
Held near Kobe, Japan, the Joint Meeting of the International Workshop and the Japanese Society of Pulmonary Functional Imaging drew in more than 250 international researchers and clinicians who work at the forefront of pulmonary functional imaging
Computed tomography (CT) is emerging as an imaging modality set to play an important role in cardiac intervention or surgery. Not only can it be used to plan complex revascularisation procedures and assess the outcome for the patient, but also might help to identify the more dangerous lesions -- so-called ‘culprits’ -- in the future.
Metabolic syndrome, diabetes and vascular disease: What do we need to know? During ECR session this important question is addressed by vascular specialist Professor Erich Minar, Assistant Head of the Department of Angiology at the Vienna General Hospital (AKH), President of the Austrian Society of Angiology, and scientific researcher working closely with research centres in the USA.
1-2 April 2011 – time for lab and clinical staff to be in Parma, Italy, at the 1st European Conference on Pre-analytical Phase. Organised by the European Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (EFCC), the meeting will meeting present a range of events to launch a platform for continuous knowledge and idea exchanges regarding pre-analytical aspects of lab medicine.
Jean-Louis Vincent, Chairman of the Dept of Intensive Care, Erasme Hospital, Université Libre de Bruxelles, welcomes visitors to this year’s International Symposium on Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine.
Turfing is a subversive activity based on a variety of economic and prestigious interests. It is opposed to the trend in modern medicine towards harmonisation, ordinate formation and QA processes. Usually, ‘highjacked’ services are characterised by uncontrolled training processes, the absence of an official syllabus, no board exams, a lack of formal (registered) practice supervision and…
Rapid advances in medicine and technology have led to a change in the job description for radiologists. With image acquisition and evaluation increasingly carried out by machines, there is a need to find new fields of activity. However, the required rethink is happening far slower than the pace of development in science and technology, believes radiologist and healthcare management expert…
Molecular imaging (MI) appears as an unavoidable challenge for the future of imaging, because MI is able to characterise cellular and molecular processes and will serve as a guide for new targeted or personalised therapies. However, MI appears as hype for many radiologists because it is too far from clinical practice. In reality, MI is already part of clinical practice using PET and targeted…
Whole-body hybrid PET-MR scanners are emerging on the market and are expected to have a significant impact in diagnostic imaging particularly in oncology applications and also in other clinical domains, such as cardiology, inflammatory and infectious disease, as well as in neurological applications.
Innovation in imaging in the last decades was mainly driven by new imaging modalities, better image quality and improved workflow tools to enhance diagnostic quality and confidence. As a global vendor we face future turf battles with new market entries, especially from Asia. To win those competitive battles we are broadening our innovation focus to serve the changing needs of radiologists.
‘The demand for radiology procedures, even on a 24/7/365 basis, seems to increase faster than the number of new radiologists. The shortage of radiologists creates a service provider gap. Further, quality, safety, education, and research become threatened,’ says Professor Jarl A Jakobsen MD PhD MHA, University of Oslo and Oslo University Hospital.
Molecular Imaging (MI) emerged in the early 21st Century as a discipline at the junction of molecular biology and in vivo imaging to enable the visualisation of the cellular function and the follow-up of the molecular processes in living organisms. Modalities available for MI encompass MRI, CT and ultrasound, PET, as well as Optical Imaging, and are by nature frequently experimental.
Radiologists play a main part in the majority of diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. For this reason a staff shortage in radiology departments severely compromises the quality of clinical processes. However, the shortage is not evident in absolute terms, because the number of radiologists is increasing in most European countries.
'What can we do about the lack of young radiologists in Europe?’ ECR 2010 congress president Professor Małgorzata Szczerbo-Trojanowska will discuss the background to this shortage and suggest ways to avert this occupational crisis, although pointing out that the problem does not exist in Poland.
The first question we should ask is whether we only lack radiologists or whether we lack medical doctors in general. If the answer is that we do not have enough specialists covering diagnostic imaging and image interpretation specialties then the question needs to be further analysed on why we cannot attract more people to take that exciting and rewarding route after completing their primary…
