CNA Conference - Introduction - Second World Congress on Cardioneuroablation

Good morning. Good morning. Good afternoon and good evening from wherever you are in the world, and welcome to the 2nd World Congress on Cardio Neuroablation. I'm Doctor John Clark, director of the arrhythmia Center at Akron Children's Hospital in Akron, Ohio. And I'm here with my colleagues, Brian Tilton, our member, my partner, Doctor Steven Manu. And some of you already recognize the man sitting to my right, my co-host, Doctor Jose Puchon. From the Heart Hospital in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Jose, you broadcast the first World Congress from Sao Paulo. What are you hoping for, for the 2nd World Congress? Oh, John, thank you very much. It is a great pleasure for me, a great honor to be participating in this meeting. And, uh, uh, we, uh, held the first congress in 2020. And in that time, we had the opportunity to have uh four of the most important investigators in the cardio ablation like Doctor Yan Yao, Doctor, uh, Mauricius Cannavaca, Doctor Zerpa, and Doctor Axel and myself. And, in, in that time, obviously, there was a low, uh, knowledge about cardio ablation mass nowadays, in this meeting, we have the participation of 16 most important electrophysiologists worldwide. I would like to thank all of, to thank all of them in order to, because they are participating, they are supporting our meeting and I would like to congratulate them by the achievements they have done in, in cardio neuroablation. And also, I would like to thank uh to uh Akron, Akron Children's Hospital because it's very important for the procedure to have uh institution like this uh uh developing the area and uh uh uh your role is very, very important because you are making the cardio ablation greater and bigger worldwide. And finally, I would like to thank you, John. Because you are a very special person, a very human person, and you are an example of the how to make and to do in order to uh open new horizons with competency, with devotion, and with the dedication. Congratulations and uh thank you uh very much. And I hope all of you have a good meeting. And we are ready to go ahead. Thank you, Jose, and, and thank you all for joining us. Uh, today's program is coming to you from Akron Children's Hospital in Akron, Ohio. A little bit about Akron Children's. We are the 9th largest free-standing pediatric children's hospital in the United States and one of the oldest. We were founded in 1890. Um, and I've been part of that history for over 25 years now, and, and I stay here because I love the mission and the vision of this hospital. I'm not gonna read to you the whole mission statement, but I wanna read 11 statement, one sentence. Akron Children's Hospital will be an innovative leader in improving child health and providing high-quality care, period. Um, they're committed not only to providing the best possible care in pediatrics, but in all aspects of pediatric medicine. And yes, we do offer the latest state of the art medicine, but more importantly, it's offered in a compassionate, family-friendly, Kid centric environment, but not just for kids, uh, for the kid at heart also. This conference is one piece of evidence of Akron Children's commitment to delivering outstanding care. Uh, we are the first hospital in Ohio to offer cardio neuroablation services, and, and how did that happen? Well, it goes back a few years. Several years ago, Akron Children sent me to Sao Paulo, Brazil to learn a new procedure from a guy named Doctor Jose Pasan. And to be honest, I didn't wanna go. Um, I was, I was not interested in learning his way of doing it because I knew he uses extra cardiac vagal stimulation. Um, and so, go ahead. Let's all roll our eyes right now. Uh, jeez, ECVS. It means more equipment, which means more expense, which means I'm gonna be begging administration for more money and more time and more technical issues, and another learning curve for me to have to go through. And, you know, we've all thought the same thing when you first heard about it. And uh so that was my attitude heading to Sao Paulo. Um, but when I got there, uh, it was a little bit different. You know, the first case that I saw, um, to start off with, they, they pushed the button for vagal nerve stimulation. Just think. And the heart just stops, just completely stops. And I said, cool, can I push that button? But then at the end of the case, you know, they're all done with the ablation and they pushed the button again, pink, and nothing happens. The heart rate doesn't change at all. And I said, that's impressive. Um, it is so elegant, so clean, so simple, and gives you a, a clear-cut endpoint to know when you're done. And I said, OK, I, I'm gonna adopt this way. Um. But Another thing about that is there's, there's a certain rush to the, to the end of the case when you push that button and nothing happens. It's like watching the delta wave disappear in the WWPW ablation. You just know, mission accomplished. Um, so I came back to Akron. And I was a convert and gonna do it Jose's way. Um, but I, I talked to my staff and said, how can we? How can we bring this new Novel therapy to Ohio when I don't have access to Doctor Pashan's vagal nerve stimulator. Um, it's not FDA approved, not available in the United States. So we had to figure out a way with the tools that we had available to mimic, to replicate what he was doing in South America. And uh we found that the digit timer worked very well for that purpose. So, that's how we ended up in Akron, Ohio, and Through my relationship with Jose, that is how this whole 2nd World Congress, uh, came to be. So we thank you for joining us. We have a fantastic day planned with world experts from 4 different continents. And excellent new topics for discussion. So really looking forward to it. Some housekeeping items before we get going. Um, this program will broadcast best if you're using Google Chrome. So if possible, please log in through that. There will be CME attached to most of the talks today, and there will be a CME button you can track on your home screen to apply for those credits. There's also an agenda if you want to see what's upcoming, what time things are going to be happening, and when your favorite speaker is going to be speaking, uh, click on the agenda button, you can find that information out. There's also a button for patient stories. Um, if you want to see a couple of patients who've been through the procedure, there's some videos there you can watch. And finally, all the questions today will be via chat. Uh, so please find the chat button, button and open that box. Um, all questions will be answered. Uh, if we don't have time to answer all the questions in real time, the questions will be forwarded to the speaker, so you will get a reply on every question that is submitted today. Um, so again, thank you for attending and with that, let us just get going.