Dear colleagues,

Upon successful completion of four BelgrAde Summits of Interventional CardiologistS (BASICS+): Clinically Integrated Approach, held in Belgrade in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008, and two CTO mini-summits held during 20008 in Belgrade, with live transmissions of 159 interventions to the audience of 300 internists/cardiologists, with an excellent success and unfortunately one fatal complication, there is no more dilemma that we have simply to continue the same way and keep organizing 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. I want to express my gratitude to all our old and new friends that has contributed to the success of this prestigious meeting. Just to mention some of our old and new friends: Dr W. Wijns, Dr S. Saito, Dr A. Colombo, Dr C. Di Mario, Dr J. Fajadet, Dr J. Ge, Dr O. Katoh, Dr Y. Louvard, Dr E. Picano, Dr A. Lafont, Dr P. Anthopoulos, Dr E. Atalar, Dr V. Ambrosini, Dr M.G. Andreassi, Dr G. Bernardi, Dr N. Botto, Dr I. Daehnert, Dr B. Dahlof, Dr G.B. Danzi, Dr B. De Bruyne, Dr A. Doganov, Dr O. Goktekin, Dr R. Erbel, Dr O. Ergene, Dr L. Finci, Dr I. Foffa, Dr A. Galassi, Dr M. Hamilos, Dr M. Haude, Dr I. Herzfeld, Dr I. Iakovou, Dr A. Iancu, Dr C. Ilsley, Dr J. Koolen, Dr O. Kozan, Dr P. Kumar, Dr A. Lazarevic, Dr C. Maccia, Dr A. Manginas, Dr A.B. Mehta, Dr L. Michalis, Dr N. Milanovic, Dr N. Milicic, Dr V. Mitrovic, Dr G. Nikolic, Dr A.G. Osiev, Dr Z. Piroth, Dr Z. Plazonic, Dr M. Rabrenovic, Dr N. Reifart, Dr G. Sianos, Dr R. Sicari, Dr M. Sobot, Dr C. Stefanadis, Dr M. Strozzi, Dr A. Terzic, Dr K. Toutouzas, Dr I. Ungi, Dr E. Vano, Dr D. Vulic, Dr M. Weber, Dr B. Weiner, Dr D. Zhou and Dr D. Zorman. Our distinguished Faculty counts about sixty members, which is the greatest number in the history of the Belgrade's Workshops. We cannot but stress that most of our guest faculty members have been principal investigators of the breakthrough studies in domain of interventional cardiology. Even more, collaboration established during BASICS+ resulted in some joint endeavours, studies and publications.

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. During the next BASICS plus we will traditionally organize the Training courses on bifurcations as well as clinical seminar on coronary physiology. It is worth mentioning that for some of these complex lesion subsets, Serbian interventional cardiologists have provided significant input. This year we will continue to use extraordinary skills by Prof. Osamu Katoh, the father of the retrograde approach in CTO recanalization, and as well as Professors: Junbo Ge, George Sianos, Alfredo Galassi, and Alexandar G. Osiev, for the benefit of our patients and education of our doctors. This would be a sort of CTO mini course on antegrade and retrograde approach.

We continue to involve more Serbian centres in the BASICS+ live transmissions. Besides Clinical Centre of Serbia, Clinical Center of Nis and Clinical Hospital center "Bezanijska kosa", this year, Institute for CVD "Dedinje", will be our significant enhancement.

This year again, BASICS plus is accredited by the European Board of Accreditation in Cardiology (EBAC) for 24 credit hours of External CME credits, which is one of the largest amount of CME credits that one scientific event in cardiology is accredited for in Europe, mainly due to our distinguished Faculty and their willingness to share their knowledge and skills. We are proud that we have a support and growing cooperation with the European Association
for Percutaneous Coronary Interventions (EAPCI) and that we have also been supported since last year by the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions (SCAI).

As in previous years, we continue to follow-up all our patients underwent interventions during Workshops, in clinically integrated approach, which represents one of the key points and features of our meetings. All the patients who had interventional procedures during the last workshop will be presented in this manner having all follow-up noninvasive and invasive data side-by-side in the Proceedings and syllabus of the Workshop. We have followed-up 19 patients treated during the Workshop 2005, 38 patients from the Workshop 2006, 41 patients from the Workshop 2007, 40 patients during last year's BASICS+, and 12 and 9 patients treated during first and second Belgrade CTO mini-summit, respectively. Of these 159 patients, 153 of them are alive and unfortunately six of them died.

One patient died due to target vessel reinfarction (four months after the procedure, probably due to stopping of dual antiplatelet therapy). Second one died from reasons not directly related to the procedure (cerebrovascular insult after CABG surgery due to failed attempt to recanalize a chronically occluded vessel during Workshop), and third during retrograde opening of RCA due to left main dissection, which was a donor vessel. Two patients died during follow-up period due to progression of pre-existing malignancies, and the sixth patient died from unknown reason.

At this point, I have to emphasize that previous BASICS+ resulted in many positive trends in Serbian interventional cardiology. There is a permanent increase in the number of interventional procedures and materials used for patient treatment (these facts are presented in the tables in the next few pages), increase in the number of international interventional studies in which our doctors are involved and better inter-regional cooperation. We have had approximately 20% increase in number of diagnostic and interventional procedures, and 45% increase in number
of primary PCIs and drug eluting stents. Since the last year, additional two cath-labs were opened in Serbia, so we have 16 cath labs in 9 centers, so currently Serbian health system has one cath lab on approximately half a million people. In three centers primary PCI is available 24h/7 days. We are happy that Serbia will be included in "Stent4Life" program of EAPCI, which will be introduced to the wide auditorium and health care authorities by Professor William Wijns, president of EAPCI.

As we are convinced that the immediate and long-term success of PCI is strongly dependent on prudent pre- and post- procedure treatment of the patient, we will also organize on the same site but in the separate auditorium Symposium: "Update cardiology 2009" from April 6-7, 2009, to be conducted in the Serbian language, because its purpose is to educate Serbian doctors for proper pre and post- treatment of our patients.

BASICS+ would not be possible without the support of the Departments of cardiosurgery and vascular surgery and Institute of anaesthesiology and reanimathology.

This year, BASICS plus is organized under the general auspices of the Mr. Boris Tadic, President of the Republic of Serbia, as well as our traditional patrons TRH Crown Prince Alexander and Princess Katherine, Tomica Milosavljevic, Minister of Health of the Republic of Serbia and Bozidar Djelic, Minister of Science of the Republic of Serbia. We must emphasize the great input and understanding of the School of Medicine, University of Belgrade, their late Dean Prof. dr Bogdan Djuricic and the Acting Dean Prof. dr Vladimir Bumbasirevic and the Board of the Dean with Prof. dr Predrag Pesko, Prof. dr Nebojsa Lalic, Prof. dr Dragan Micic, Prof. dr Vesna Bosnjak-Petrovic, Prof. dr Tanja Jovanovic and Prof. dr Gordana Teofilovski-Parapid.

It is of the particular importance to note that we had enormous help of the interventional cardiology companies, pharmaceutical industry, Fox television, National television, as well as Telekom Srbija Joint Stock Telecommunications Co. and their Director General Branko Radujko, to render live coverage of the event. We could never succeed in organizing this meetings without generous help of "Publishing House for Text Books" and their CEO Miloljub Albijanic. We do hope that all of them will continue to offer us such a generous support throughout the workshops to follow.

Our efforts are generously supported and understood by the Mrs. S. Vukajlovic, CEO of the Fund for the health care of the Republic of Serbia.

My special thanks goes to the whole staff of the Institute, especially Catheterization laboratories staff, leadership of the Clinical Center of Serbia, CEO Dr Dj. Bajec, Director of Supply Office Mrs. M. Kocic, Director of Central Pharmacy Office Mr. Ph, G. Iljadica and last but not least to the skeleton of the Workshop's organization starting with Dr M.A. Nedeljkovic, Dr B. Beleslin, as well as to secretaries Dr V.Giga, Dr M. Dobric, Dr Z. Mehmedbegovic and Miss M. Markovic.

Special thanks goes to "Mladost tourist" organization, and their CEO Radomir Podinic, as well as to Mr Slobodan Jankovic and Mr Bosko Buha.

I wish that all our friends, faculty members who devote us their precious time and energy, interventional cardiology companies, pharmaceutical industry, Fox television, National television and all participants in the milieu where the border between faculty and attendants is not any longer visible, join us in our mutual endeavour which will certainly result in another successful workshop.

We believe that our meeting will further promote knowledge of cardiovascular disease and stimulate further investigation. The previous four 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 Cardiology Society of Serbia