A few days ago I received an announcement by email that the Cardiostim meeting for 2018 has been cancelled. The Cardiostim website confirms this, and it looks like the meeting is gone for good.
Back in June, 2000, while still an academic electrophysiologist at the University of Colorado, I attended my first Cardiostim meeting in Nice, France. I loved it. The beautiful weather, the azure Mediterranean, the restaurants and cafés, and the charm of “Old Nice” were a relaxing break from work. The abstract presentations, poster sessions, and workshops were not too different from those of the Heart Rhythm Society back home, though obviously the European influence was greater. For good or ill, the lack of an FDA meant the Europeans got to play with new technology sooner than we did. Sure, industry was there in a large hall with all their exhibits, just like at HRS. But when they realized I was an American they didn’t really bother me. Their targets were the Europeans.
The coffee, bread, and pastries were excellent.
Two years later, I brought a couple of my fellows with me back to Cardiostim. They presented a poster and a couple of abstracts. I went swimming out to the buoys off-shore. I ran a 5K sponsored by Biosense-Webster along the Promenade des Anglais. It was a great experience for the fellows and another enjoyable visit for me.
In 2003 I went into private practice with a large cardiology group in Kentucky. Nevertheless in 2004, and every two years after that (the meeting was biannual), I attended Cardiostim. Along the way I dumped HRS, tired of the conflict of interest between its mission to represent electrophysiologists and its industry support, whose goal was to expand device implantation by recruiting non-electrophysiologists to implant. And so Cardiostim became a biannual bright spot to look forward to during the drudgery of private practice.
The last Cardiostim I attended was in 2012. In 2014 I returned to Nice during Cardiostim, but I didn’t attend the meetings. I had retired from medicine. Nevertheless it was fun to see the city invaded one more time by the nerdy guys in their blue blazers (and women in equivalent uniforms) carrying their Cardiostim bags. It was clear the electrophysiologists were in town.
In 2016 I didn’t visit during Cardiostim. Later that year, in November, I was in Villefranche-sur-mer, the town next door, at the Institut Français, pursuing my post-retirement goal of learning French. The Institut had fewer than their usual number of students that year. Enrollment had dropped after the terrorist truck attack in Nice on Bastille Day. That had occurred after Cardiostim. We visited Nice. Hundreds of hand-made memorials had been placed in a park adjacent to the Promenade des Anglais. The Promenade itself was in disarray. Areas of fencing and pavement were being repaired. New pylons were being put up, as an after-the-fact defence against a sickness that can’t be cured by putting up pylons. Nevertheless people were stretched out on the rocky beach as usual, joggers and cyclists plied the pavement, and business carried on as usual. Although this attack had nothing to do with the end of Cardiostim (which was apparently due to Europace splitting off from them and lack of industry support), it seems like a sad coincidence that the meeting died after that vile attack.
So, goodbye Cardiostim. Thanks for the memories.
