The Cardiovascular Research Technologies (CRT) 2022 in-person meeting was a huge success. After two years of virtual and hybrid meetings, it felt like it was time to go back to an in-person meeting.
When CRT 2020 was held in February 2020 at the Gaylord National Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, we were alarmed about a mysterious virus coming from China. On the last day of the meeting, colleagues and delegates from overseas were called to return to their home countries to take care of patients who had contracted the virus, live cases from Italy were canceled, and the buzz in the air was that something serious was happening, but no one imagined that we were entering into a pandemic state that would change life for many. CRT 2020 was the last major cardiology meeting before the onset of the pandemic, and as a result, all large medical in-person meetings ceased. It took the community several months to adjust to the lockdowns and to focus on taking care of critically ill patients and combating the virus with vaccines and therapeutics, and naturally, medical education was nearly forgotten, except for topics related to COVID-19. It was several months into the pandemic before the medical community adjusted to the new reality and stepped up to resume medical education virtually via Zoom and other platforms.
Shortly thereafter, it became apparent that converting an in-person meeting to a virtual one is not that simple. The main challenges were different time zones, difficulties to glue the attendees to hours of content transmitted now via the screen for three or more consecutive days. Although these virtual meetings included rich content transmitted via multiple channels, the lack of live cases and limited interaction with the audience led to limited viewing time, even for late-breaking trials and recorded live case transmissions. Therefore, most of the content was watched on demand.
Another interesting observation was the reluctance of physicians to pay for watching these programs, and despite massive registration numbers, the actual number of attendees in these virtual programs was small. Given this experience, CRT went a different direction, converting a four-day meeting to 10 Saturdays for 4 h per session streamed live only. This offering was successful and interactive, with nearly 300 individual attendees for each session. The majority of attendees stayed at least 90 min per session. The lessons learned from this experience were that virtual programs can be a standalone educational platform if planned as such and probably will be solidified in the future as a companion to in-person meetings for disseminating medical education as long as they are live, limited in duration, and allow interaction.
In the past year, several meetings launched the hybrid approach to have in-person and virtual components for the same meeting. In these programs, the virtual component was free or heavily discounted, and those who attended in person had to pay an admission fee. For these programs, many of the attendees defaulted to the virtual option, meaning in-person attendance was poor.
CRT 2022 was planned as an in-person meeting only. In February, the number of COVID-19 cases had plummeted after the omicron surge subsided, and this resulted in a high attendance of more than 2000 delegates. As the first fully in-person cardiology meeting since the start of the pandemic, there was excitement and joy among the participants that they were able to greet each other face to face. It was a large and safe event that offered a plethora of data techniques, innovations, live cases, etc. But the main event was in the hallways of the hotel, when face-to-face networking hit its peak.
Perhaps the virtual meetings are a silver lining of the pandemic: a new medium to share medical education to everyone at a low cost. The question is, what does the future hold for in-person meetings, and what should be the optimal size of medical conferences and congresses? At CRT 2022, Deborah Birx, MD, the White House coronavirus response coordinator under President Donald Trump, predicted that there will be more waves of COVID-19 variants and that the pandemic is far from over.
Therefore, with the pandemic threat remaining and virtual meetings as an option, it would be difficult to fill large conference centers that are up to a mile long. Meetings that used to have 12,000 to 25,000 attendees will shrink substantially. In addition, the boutique meeting concept works better, as more physicians like to go to the conference that covers their specific specialty. Therefore, meetings like CRT, which is dedicated to interventional cardiologists, will continue to be strong and a favorite for this subspecialty. What's unique about the meeting is that the agenda is built by the faculty – over 600 individuals who suggest the best topics for lectures and discussion. Also, the meeting targets fellows and early career individuals. The feedback that we received from our attendees was overwhelmingly positive, which motivates our team to continue to provide high-quality programs both virtually and in person.
In this issue of the journal, you will find the best abstracts and case reports describing live cases that were presented at the meeting, along with other case reports received in the last year. A future issue will include the best innovations presented at the meeting. Meanwhile, we keep up with the trifecta of the Cardiovascular Revascularization Medicine, the CRTonline.org and CardioTube websites, and the CRT in-person and virtual meetings. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the CRT meeting staff, to share my gratitude for your support and, hopefully, to see all of you again at our next meeting, beginning February 25, 2023.