Ahead of the first virtual edition of the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) meeting—TCT Connect 2020 (14–18 October)—course directors, Juan Granada (New York, USA) and Ajay Kirtane (New York, USA), speak to Cardiovascular News about how the event has been shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Everything has been different, starting with the fact that our scientific and research community is in complete disarray; people are concerned and preoccupied about what is happening; [and] people are having trouble going to the cath labs and doing cases,” said Granada, outlining the challenge of putting together the event against the backdrop of the pandemic.
Despite these challenges, Granada explains that TCT Connect 2020 attendees will find a virtual event that retains the identity of the face-to-face congress in its content and delivery. This will include a full line-up of late breaking trials, highlights of which were picked out by Kirtane, including the latest research on vulnerable plaque imaging, structural heart disease, drug-eluting stent trials as well as studies in the endovascular space.
“In trying to truncate the programme for TCT we had to say ‘what do we want to preserve, and what will we defer for the live meeting next year?’,” Kirtane said, discussing the full programme of research and discussion scheduled across the four–day event. “What Juan and all of the team have tried to do is make topics germane for current clinical practice but also to really cherish the training features of the meeting that so many interventionalists have come to rely upon.”
