From 7 to 9 September, Volgograd was the venue for the 2nd All-Russian Congress of Paediatric Cardiac Surgeons and Congenital Heart Disease Specialists.
The three-day event was attended by around a thousand experts from all Russian regions, including specialists of Almazov National Medical Research Centre.
Dr. Tatiana Pervunina, Director of the Institute of Perinatology and Paediatrics, was a member of the organising committee and spoke on the topic “Experience of heart transplantation in children at Almazov Centre”, co-authored with her colleagues (T. Vershinina, S. Fetisova, E. Yakovleva, P. Fedotov, M. Gordeev, G. Nikolaev, M. Simonenko, E. Vasichkina).
Maria Simonenko, a researcher at the Research Laboratory of Cardiopulmonary Testing, gave a presentation on «Long-term outcomes of heart transplantation in children: transition to the adult follow-up group», co-authored with M. Sitnikova, P. Fedotov, G. Nikolaev, M. Gordeev, M. Karpenko, T. Vershinina, E. Vasichkina and T. Pervunina.
The session «Infective Endocarditis. Infectious Complications in Paediatric Cardiology» was chaired by Tatiana Pervunina and featured the presentation by R. Badurov “Infectious endocarditis in paediatric age”, co-authored with I. Averkin and A. Gorbatykh.
Svetlana Fetisova and Tatiana Vershinina presented their experience in the treatment of children with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy in the presentation entitled «Diagnostic criteria of muscle bridges in children with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy».
The experience of transcatheter aortic valve replacement in a 13-year-old patient at Almazov Centre was presented by A. Lyapunova, A. Gorbatykh and E. Grekhov, who also co-chaired the session “Surgical treatment of congenital heart disease”.
The experience of managing pregnant women with a single left ventricle was presented by A. Chynybekova, O. Irtyuga, A. Bautin, O. Lee and T. Pervunina.
Clinical psychologists of Almazov Centre also took an active part in the congress: Margarita Shlyakhto and Tatiana Shumova gave a presentation entitled «Communicating bad news: simple tools for difficult conversations in medicine (cardiology)».
This major event was organised by the Russian Ministry of Health, the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Interregional Society of Paediatric Heart Surgeons, the Russian Society of Paediatric Cardiology and the Volgograd Regional Health Committee.
The programme featured special sessions chaired by leading Russian paediatric cardiologists and cardiovascular surgeons, transplant surgeons, anaesthetists and intensivists. In addition to paediatric cardiac surgeons, the congress was attended by doctors from various specialties who care for patients with congenital heart disease.