Interview with Prof. Matthias Heringlake

Interview with Prof. dr. Matthias Heringlake, Chair of the Local Organising Committee, conducted by Dr. Susanne Kammerer

Team approach to master future challengesComprehensive Cardiovascular Cardiothoracic Care (C4) was the core theme of the 32nd Annual Congress of the European Association of Cardiothoracic Anaesthesiology (EACTA) in Berlin. Prof. Matthias Heringlake summarises necessary changes and future possibilities of members in the cardio team.

What was the core theme of this year’s congress and why did you choose it?

The field of cardiothoracic anaesthesiology has expanded and undergone tremendous changes within the last years since we are increasingly caring also for patients undergoing interventional procedures. Additionally, there is a growing interest in looking after cardiac patients in a heart team approach. We chose the topic of comprehensive cardiovascular and cardiothoracic care, since we feel that we have to take responsibility - together with cardiologists and cardiac surgeons as members of the heart team - for the treatment path and to decide how individual patients shall be managed. In this regard, we thought it would be helpful to look beyond the operating theatre into other fields, especially into the interventional sides of our work.

As you already mentioned, the team gets increasingly important. How can the challenges be best managed in the future?

This will depend on the way hospitals will be organised and has a lot to do with the reimbursement system. For example, here in Germany and in several other European countries, cardiologists, as well as cardiac surgeons are, of course, interested in caring for as many procedures as possible because this is directly connected to the financial success of their department. Prospectively, it would of course be much more appropriate to focus on the optimal solution for individual patients and to develop the procedural path independent from the primary medical speciality and the economic success of individual departments. Thus, we hope that some topics raised at this congress will help to move a little bit further towards a team approach.

You were responsible for the scientific topics for the convention. What are the highlights of this year’s congress? What is not to be missed?

Actually, one highlight is indeed the opening session, because we have not presented the need for interdisciplinarity in such a depth in other EACTA meetings before. In addition, we will have some dedicated sessions on the general management of patients with heart failure and the associated economic problems.

But we will not only deal with the question how to optimally treat our patients, but also go into the details of physiology using basic science; of course, a rather interesting approach. Additionally, we have a bundle of master classes that deal with specific topics important for our field, e.g. masterclasses on perfusion or perioperative ventricular assist devices or on the management of bleeding and coagulation: in these courses, many topics important for our field will be highlighted, beginning with the selection of the patient moving forward to the procedural treatment. What are the pitfalls? How can I manage a failing right ventricle? How to provide an elderly patient with the best possible post-operative care? We are expanding our discipline more from a basic anaesthetic treatment to comprehensive perioperative care.



Posted on 21 April 201717 March 2021