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Asian Cardiovascular Surgery: A New Horizon

Tokyo, Japan

Everything changes except the change itself. There has been a drastic change in the global community of cardiovascular surgery. The International Society for Cardiovascular Surgery (ISCVS) was maintained more than half a century by wisdom and patience of many surgeons. However, the spirits of internationalism of the founders of the Society have been taken over by current predominance of unilateral globalization.

The concept of "Cardiovascular Surgery" in ISCVS became in danger when the North American Chapter lost almost all cardiac surgeons. This was because of the complete division of specialties between vascular and cardiac surgery. This was also the case in Australia. In Asia and Europe, however, the separation of subspecialties has been comparatively slow and each Chapter is composed of cardiac, vascular and cardiovascular surgeons practicing in both specialties. In fact, the number of cardiac surgeons outweighs that of vascular surgeons in the Asian Chapter. For these five years, there have been a lot of futile discussions between vascular and cardiovascular Chapters with regard to the future direction of the Society and its journal, Cardiovascular Surgery. In recognition of these debates in ISCVS, the North American Chapter changed its name to American Association for Vascular Surgery and decided to stop the mandatory subscription to the official journal, because vascular surgeons in that area did not want to read the cardiac articles in the journal. Loss of the major group of subscribers resulted in the cessation of the publication of the journal at the end of 2003. Furthermore, the past and the current Presidents of the Society proposed first to change the name of ISCVS to International Society for Vascular Surgery and then to split the Society into two to found a new International Society for Vascular Specialists. It was apparent that the vascular Chapters did not care about the cardiovascular Chapters in Asia and Europe. It was also unfortunate for ISCVS that the officers of the central office are mostly vascular surgeons from vascular Chapters.

The Asian Chapter of ISCVS was created in 1972 and changed its name to the Asian Society for Cardiovascular Surgery (ASCVS) in 1993. The ASCVS has remained as a Chapter of ISCVS, paying dues, attending its biennial World Congress and subscribing obligatorily to its official publication. For these 12 years, the ASCVS has grown up significantly. The membership has doubled in number and the participating regions or countries have increased six times. The Society became one of the participating organization of the CTSNet and every member of the Society has his or her own homepage on it. On the other hand, the Asian Cardiovascular and Thoracic Annals (ACTA) was first published in 1993, incidentally the same year when the ASCVS was founded. The Annals has been recognized as an established journal of our specialty, since it was selected as the forth on-line journal of the CTSNet and indexed in the Medline. Direct affiliation between ASCVS and ACTA had to wait until 2000 when ACTA became the official publication of ASCVS, although the subscription to the Annals was voluntary for membership of ASCVS.

In face of the changes towards unilateralism in ISCVS, an important decision was made at the Executive Council of the ASCVS. The Asian Society will become totally independent from the umbrella of the International Society as of the end of 2003. However, the ASCVS realizes the importance of internationalism on the worldwide scale and keenly wants to stay in the international community of our specialty. The Society has approached to other cardiothoracic surgical Societies in North America and Europe and proposed to reconstruct a new world network of our specialty. As independent affiliates each other, every Society would pursue the same objectives such as common use of STS database system in all regions. Of course, the ASCVS has to grow to a key Society as comparable to the established Societies in other continents.

The Executive Council of ASCVS has decided to tighten the relationship with ACTA by making its subscription mandatory for every regular membership of the Society. This is effective from the first issue of 2004. Although there exist many problems at this transitional period, both the Society and the Publisher recognize how important it is to work together not only for the sake of the Society and the Annals but also for the interest of the Asian people. We have grown up to stand on our own feet and look for a brilliant horizon for the Asian Cardiovascular Surgery.

This Article Extract Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Personal Folders Download to citation manager Author home page(s): Akira Furuse Permission Requests Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Furuse, A. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Furuse, A.