Dear colleagues,

Upon successful completions of three Workshops - Complex Coronary Angioplasty
up to Chronic Total Occlusions: Clinically Integrated Approach, held in Belgrade in
2005, 2006 and 2007 with live transmitions of almost 100 patients (including among
common people even the President of the Serbian Assembly) to the audience of 300 internists/cardiologists, with an excellent success and no life threatening complications, there is no more dilemma that we have simply to continue the same way and organize such an event on a yearly basis. The success of the previous workshops was complete not only in respect to the care rendered to the patients, but also in respect to education and exchange of experience. Strengthening and developing of new friendships over 3 continents resulted in the third, not less important, dimension of such a meeting. Benevolence and generosity of the most recognized interventional cardiologist to participate as operators, lecturers or commentators, even to bring and donate their PCI tools not available in our catheterization laboratories was impressive and unforgettable. Just to mention our old and new friends: Dr A. Colombo (Italy), Dr C. Di Mario (United Kingdom), Dr J. Ge (China), Dr Y. Louvard (France), Dr S. Saito (Japan), Dr W. Wijns (Belgium), Dr E. Picano (Italy), Dr A. Lafont (France), Dr V. Ambrosini (Italy), Dr M.G. Andreassi (Italy), Dr G. Bernardi (Italy), Dr N. Botto (Italy), Dr I. Daehnert (Germany), Dr B. Dahlof (Sweden), Dr B. De Bruyne (Belgium), Dr A. Doganov (Bulgaria), Dr F. Eberli (Switzerland), Dr R. Erbel (Germany), Dr L. Finci (Switzerland), Dr I. Foffa (Italy), Dr M. Hamilos (Belgium), Dr M. Haude (Germany), Dr I. Iakovou (Greece), Dr C. Ilsley (United Kingdom), Dr P. Kumar (India), Dr A. Lazarevic (BIH), Dr C. Maccia (France), Dr A. Manginas (Greece), Dr A.B. Mehta (India), Dr L. Michalis (Greece), Dr V. Mitrovic (Germany), Dr G. Nikolic (Montenegro), Dr A.G. Osiev (Russia), Dr Z. Piroth (Hungary), Dr Z. Plazonic (Croatia), Dr M. Rabrenovic (Montenegro), Dr N. Reifart (Germany), Dr G. Sianos (Netherlands), Dr C. Stefanadis (Greece), Dr K. Toutouzas (Greece), Dr I. Ungi (Hungary), Dr E. Vano (Spain), Dr M. Weber (Germany), Dr D. Zhou (China) and Dr D. Zorman (Slovenia).

We cannot but stress that most of our guest faculty members have been principal investigators of the breakthrough studies in domain of interventional cardiology. Impressed by readiness and willingness of the best interventional cardiologist to share their knowledge and experience in the developing country as Serbia is, we decided to change the name of the workshop into BelgrAde Summit of Interventional CardiologistS: Clinically Integrated Approach with acronym BASICS ^plus.

As the key feature of our workshops is clinically integrated approach, we shall continue to present and follow all the patients. By doing so, we are trying to attract and exchange ideas about patients' wellbeing with the doctors who are not interventional cardiologists, but are referring patients and are taking care of them post intervention. With the initiative of Prof. Eugenio Picano, who is a foreign member of Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, we will organize two sessions that are related to radiation protection, the field that was unfortunately neglected, and that is of paramount importance for our patients and cath lab staff. During the next BASICS ^plus, training courses on bifurcations, chronic total occlusions, ST elevation myocardial infarction and multivessel disease will be organized using simulators. It is worth mentioning that for some of these complex lesion subsets, Serbian interventional cardiologists have provided significant input. We believe that our meeting will further promote knowledge of cardiovascular disease and stimulate further investigation. The previous three workshops and everyday practice have also shown that the Serbian Cardiology is ready to be an equal partner in investigational efforts worldwide.

	Miodrag Ostojic, M.D., Ph.D., FESC, FACC Professor of Cardiology/Medicine Academician of Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts Head, Department of Cardiology Institute for Cardiovascular Diseases Clinical Center of Serbia President of the Working group on interventional cardiology, Cardiology Society of Serbia