Greeting

Welcome Message from the President of Cardiomyopathy Education and Research Center

Greetings! It is my pleasure to welcome all of you to come and visit our proud Cardiomyopathy Education and Research Center (CERC). This center was founded to foster an educational environment in the medical community for close interaction concerning rare myocardial disease, such as Amyloidosis, Sarcoidosis and Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. We aim to enhance excellence in research and education of rare myocardial diseases, diseases that are difficult to diagnose but yet, clinically important and potentially life-threatening if left without attention. To achieve these objectives, we promote social and academic interactions among cardiologists for proper diagnosis and management of rare myocardial diseases. We encourage collaboration. The annual ASH conference is one aspect that aim to provide these interactions.

The establishment of CERC was initiated after the successful 1st ASH conference in October 2017, which aimed to bring medical specialists together for a hot discussion on rare myocardial diseases. These diseases are occasionally encountered in tertiary hospitals, may not be too rare but sometimes very difficult to diagnose. The purpose of the ASH conference was to bring these perplexing cases together and share each other’s experience on these diseases. A vibrant mixture of not only cardiologists but also geneticists and pathologists brought up not only answers to the cases but more importantly, further questions at the 1st ASH conference.

These requests from the medical society spearheaded a more organized movement towards an establishment of a corporation that would maintain the educational atmosphere in these diseases. Thus, the main purpose of CERC is two-folds. The first objective is to educate medical specialists in rare myocardial disease by debate and discussion between each other and also by sharing each other’s experience. This educational objective is also accomplished by invitation of authorities from abroad as well. The second objective is to bring up important clinical questions regarding amyloidosis, sarcoidosis and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and to provide answers to these clinical questions that could only be done with collaborative research. Since these diseases are not commonly encountered, these answers could only be provided by multicenter registries or trials and also, by active discussion with each other.

To meet these requirements, the authorities of the major hospitals in Korea have all agreed to participate in the establishment of CERC and to collaborate with each other for the education and research of these diseases. Although the history of CERC is now only at its infancy, it boasts more than 150 members from the hospitals over Korea as well as more than 200 participants annually for the ASH conference, which is evidence that our society is indeed filling in the unmet clinical need. By providing these environments, all of us at CERC are confident that everybody visiting the CERC as well as the ASH conference will enjoy the active interaction. It is my pleasure to greet everybody both offline and online for visiting the CERC!

Dae-Won Sohn, MD, PhD, FASE, FACC
President, Cardiomyopathy Education and Research Center
Director of Organizing committee, ASH Conference
Professor, Department of Internal Medicine, Seoul National University Hospital