Category Archives: Practicum

2022 – Utrecht

What a fantastic event it was! We organized the European Practicum on Cardiopulmonary Exercise testing last week in Utrecht (NL) hosted by UMC Utrecht UMC Utrecht Child Health.
After being postponed because of COVID in 2020, and 2022, we were finally able to host the 2022 European Practicum in the Hotel Mitland.

It was a lot of work to run a three days meeting with more than 180 people attending from all over the world. Hotel Mitland was a perfect venue to host the lectures, tutorials and laboratory sessions.

To run this Practicum depends on participation fees and sponsors and we are very grateful to our (CPXInternational Inc) sponsors. These were Cortex Medical, COSMED – The Metabolic Company, MGC Diagnostics, Vyaire Medical and SCHILLER AG. They also make it possible to run 5 simultaneous practical CPET sessions. Thank you again for the support of equipment and staff.

There were over 27 lectures plus two laboratory sessions where actual cardiopulmonary exercise tests (CPET) were performed, as well as 2 tutorial sessions.

Many thanks to all staff, speakers, sponsors, volunteers, and the secretary of the meeting Sylvia van Zuilen. Without your contribution it would be impossible to organize the practicum. I really hope that all participants enjoyed the 2022 European Practicum. We worked hard to make it an unforgettable event. For many of you (including myself) it was the first live professional meeting since the COVID pandemic.
Thank you all! #cpet #cpx #exercisephysiology

 

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Graz European Practicum 2019

The 2019 European Practicum was held at the:
Medical  University of Graz – Horsaalzentrum
Auenbruggerplatz 50 ~ 8036 Graz ~ Austria

It was a great sucess in no small part due to the highly efficient  organising team under the auspices of Irene Czurda. (Left side nearest the camera!)  The doctor behind the organisation was Priv.Doz.Dr Gabor Kovacs (Gabor)

It is no small undertaking to run a Practicum of three days with more than 60 people attending from all over Europe; making this a truly International meeting. Graz University Hospital provided great facilities for the lectures, tutorials and laboratory sessions.

To run this Practicum depends on participation fees and sponsors and we are very grateful to our (CPX International Inc) sponsors. These were Cortex, Cosmed and Schiller – I really do thank them.

There were over 30 lectures plus two laboratory sessions where actual cardiopulmonary exercise tests (CPET) were performed. The people to whom I spoke were very happy with the Practicum and the way that it was run.

The tutorials were divided into three levels. One for ‘beginners’; one for ‘intermediate’ and one for ‘advanced’ participants. This was a sucessful inovation and feel sure will be repeated.

 

 

 

 

The traditional course dinner was held at the Gosserbrau Restaurant, the most traditional brewery in Graz. The atmosphere was pleasant which facilitated the exchange between participants and the teaching Faculty. Typical local food such as pumpkin soup and Schnitzel were washed down with traditional Gosser beer.

There was a young investigators award with over Euros 2,000 available as prize money. The winner was Julia Hock, from the Munich Heart Centre, runner up was Max Potratz with third place going to Massimo Mapelli

 

 

 

 

For those who were not shy there was the traditional group photo …Unfortunately my camera was unable to see around corners or through people, so some of the participants were not seen. I do apologise but as the saying goes ‘if you can’t see the camera, it won’t see you.’

My thanks to all of you and I will start sending out abstracts very soon. I really hope that you enjoyed the Practicum. You are always able to contact me with briqbats or bouquets.

Dr Paul Older

 

 

Brockenhurst Practicum 2017

The Practicum at Brockenhurst, from November 7th to November 9th, was a great sucess with a record number of attendees – 120!!  The meeting was run by Professor Mike Grocott with Siobhan Mythen doing a lot of the organization. This photo was taken by Glen Jevon using my camera. He is a professional photographer, who took a video of all the talks. Hopefully they will be become available in time.The meeting was in fact a meeting of POETTS, EBPOM as well as CPX International Inc. It was held at a hotel in the New Forest called the Balmer Lawn Hotel. It was a lovely old hotel with old fashioned excellent service. I visited the village of Brockenhurst and saw an amazing butcher with the following sign outside. 

Haven’t seen one like that where I come from.
We went out for dinner at restaurants around where we were staying. The food was outstanding and the evenings were memorable.
The lectures were excellent and altogether it was an outstanding Practicum. Our major sponsors were Schiller, Cosmed, Cortex and Geratherm; I really do hope that they felt it was a sucessful meeting.
There was a long Board Meeting on the Monday before the Practicum. Two things to come out of this were that Professor Grocott was elected as Vice President of our Society and the AGM agreed to increase the size of the Board from seven to nine.

The 2018 Practicum will be held in Cologne in October under the auspices of Dr Daniel Dumitrescu

Dr Paul Older
Executive Director CPX International.
November 2017

Milan Practicum 2016

October 26th – 29th 2016

The Practicum was very well attended and run in its entirety at Centro Cardiologico Monzino. This is a Hospital devoted entirely to patients with heart disease whether that be medical or surgical.
Milan is a large very old city with a host of exciting antiquities including the magnificent Cathedral and Castle. Professor Agostoni also found some very exciting and different restaurants.
The programme was the traditional European Practicum format with three days of lectures, tutorials and practical laboratory sessions. Several major players in the cardiopulmonary industry were represented; these included Carefusion, Cortex, Cosmed, Schiller and Geratherm.
The physiology lectures were given by Professor Susan Ward and despite having taken an interest in physiology over many years, I learn new information at every Practicum. It was very good to see that the lectures kept pace with current issues such as neoadjuvant therapy and the MECKI score.
An innovation this year was the introduction of three prizes to the best research papers presented to the Research session on the Saturday morning. The Board had decided to award each of the best three presenters a prize of US$1,500. The winners were, in no particular order, Stefania Paolillo, Felix Gerhardt and Roberto Badagliacca. It is hoped that these awards will be awarded each year.
It is gratifying to see registrants from so many countries and I noted the presence of registrants from mainland China.

Milan2016GroupPhoto

Not a good photo. Many of our registrants were in the shade!!