Focus on Egypt

ACVC National Representatives

Prof. Ahmed Magdy

• Consultant Cardiologist, National Heart Institute, Cairo
• Chairman of the Egyptian Fellowship Board of Interventional Cardiology
• Co-Chairman EgIC (Egyptian Working Group of Interventional Cardiology)
• Chairman COMBATMI, Ischemia Club

ACVC Young National Representative

Dr. Haytham Soliman Ghareeb

Fayoum University Cardiology Department 

Interview

What does it mean to be an ACVC National Representative (NR)?

Being the National Representative of ACVC in Egypt is an honor and a responsibility.

I know ACVC for 15 years when I became aware about their educational activities and annual congress. I was part of the faculty and understood more about the missions and activities of ACVC, enthusiasm and strong scientific background and friendly nature of the leadership and community.

I was nominated several years ago as NR (National Representative) for Egypt. I increased awareness about ACVC among my colleagues and fellows and being in the board of the EgSC “Egyptian Society of Cardiology” and co-chairman of the EgIC “Egyptian Working Group of Interventional Cardiology,  we were able to increase the collaboration with ACVC.

Being also in the National Heart Institute, the biggest cardiac center in Egypt as past chairman of cardiology department, past director of ICU and programme director of Egyptian Fellowship Board of Cardiology and Board of Interventional cardiology, I facilitated transferring the data and experience we get from ACVC congress, position statement about ICU and the ACVC Decision-Makign Toolkit for acute cardiac cases management to the cardiology community in Egypt.

In my opinion, making the link between ACVC and cardiology community is very important, also encouraging colleagues to share in the annual congress and submit abstracts. Some of the specialists also took the ACVC certification exam.

Dr. Haytham Soliman, NR for young cardiologists, was a very good addition with his activities and enthusiasm. He is part of COMBATMI, the Egyptian Society of Cardiology CME Group, Ischemia Club, helps in education, support of the collaboration with ACVC.

What can ACVC bring to your national working group and vice-versa?

ACVC adds to the working group more insights, experience in the strategy for heart attack diagnosis and management according to the latest update.

Interaction and exchange of ideas with ACVC faculty as well as implementation of ESC Clinical Practice Guidelines and position statement in the field of ACS and critically ill patients are a useful plateform to collaborate.

What does an ICCU look like in your country?

There are big cardiac tertiary centers like National Heart Institute, Critical Care Center in Cairo University, other big university centers, governmental teaching and national insurance centers, with facility for primary PCI and managing high risk acute cardiac cases with ventilators, monitoring, invasive procedures. There had been great improvement in the outcome of ACS patients with the governmental and insurance service sponsoring millions of patients for all cardiac procedures.

In addition to hundreds of ICU/CCUs in small hospitals most of them have CCU for cardiac patients supervised by cardiologists and ICUs managed by intensive care doctors.

In the past decades, there had been development in CCU and ICU, availability of anti-thrombotics and aggressive medical management and possibility of PPCI.

Describe the most challenging situation in your country

The heart attacks are still high numbers in Egypt. Small hospitals still use thrombolytic therapy for reperfusion and not all the patients are transferred within hours to PCI centers.

We don’t have advanced supportive devices like Impella, ECMO except very a few number of centers.

Achievement and collaboration in the acute cardiac care field

1. Involving ACVC in the national cardiology meetings, Egyptian Society of Cardiology Annual Meeting, COMBATMI/ Acute Cardiology Meeting, inviting ACVCA faculty and sharing in joint sessions.
2. Spreading the news about the ACVC Decision-Making Toolkit, that helped our fellows manage heart attacks and acute cardiac cases.
3. Participating in the position papers prepared by ACVC on ICU and spreading the recommendations with the position paper.
4. Our efforts were mainly directed to keep on the same track of organising scientific meetings and workshops for training and educating doctors, nurses and paramedics in the field of STEMI management and ACS in general.
5. Egypt also participated in European society of cardiology EORP STEMI registry