Dear Colleagues,

The National Cardiology Congress that the 24^th is being held, is one of the leading congresses organized in our country with high quality scientific content and continuously growing number of participants and contributors. We hold our Congress in İstanbul, 2010 Culture Capital of Europe, this year. Our aim is to organize the 25^th Congress also in this global center with the participation of many more local and international delegates.

We tried our best to accomplish the best program for our guests. We shall find the opportunity of updating information and debate on current developments on cardiovascular diseases in "Symposia", "Update Meetings", "Debates" and "How to" sessions. We all will share opinions on clinical practices and solve problems we face in sessions titled, "Challenging Cases in Cardiology". We shall enhance our competence besides our knowledge through "Visual Interactive Courses".

We brought an important novelty to our 24^th Congress. Considering our participants and contributor body and the needs of expanding organization of recently introduced National Family Medicine System, we organized all the sessions in this field in Hall 3 under the general topic of "Cardiology in Practice". Our aim is to present main current information on cardiovascular diseases focused on daily practices, thus to improve daily practices based on current applications and guidelines.

The President of European Cardiology Association and a group of elite international speakers on cardiology will be our guests. The traditional Turkish-German Societies of Cardiology joint meeting will be held within our Congress this year. Our joint meeting with The Bosnia-Herzegovina Cardiology Association that we aim to develop our mutual cooperation will also take place within the 24^th Congress.

Our Congress, ensuring and providing information and facilities of knowledge on academic researches organized in our country, through posters and oral presentations, is also open to international papers this year. This novelty will intensify the international characteristics of the Congress. Although this is the first time, several colleagues from other countries showed great interest in sending their abstracts to our Congress. Indeed, the number of abstracts submitted from other countries reached to 10 percent of those sent by the Turkish colleagues. We are heartily grateful to those colleagues sending abstracts from the other countries. We believe that the international characteristics of our Congress will be deep-rooted with this innovation. Awards will also be presented to the best abstracts as in previous years. The accepted papers are collected in this Supplementum 2 of our official journal "Türk Kardiyoloji Derneği Arşivi / Archives of the Turkish Society of Cardiology" indexed in Pubmed, IndexMedicus, MEDLINE, IndexCopernicus, EMBASE (Excerpta Medica) and TÜBİTAK ULAKBİM Turkish Medical Directory. They will also be presented in CD form arranged with an index that facilitates easy-reach to the desired abstracts.

Looking forward to meet and share our knowledge in the 24th National Cardiology Congress organized with careful attention and within which each of our colleagues will find whatever he looks for in every subject, we remain with best regards.

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European Board for Accreditation in Cardiology The 24th National Congress of Cardiology is accredited by the European Board for Accreditation in Cardiology (EBAC) for 11 hours of External CME credits. Each participant should claim only those hours of credit that have actually been spent in the educational activity. EBAC Works in cooperation with the European Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (EACCME), which is an institution of the European Union of Medical Specialists (UEMS).