Goal of the establishment of academic society and its establishment

The Korean Society of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Anesthesiologists started off with a ‘Research Meeting of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Anesthesiologists’. It was a meeting that started under the goal of “contributing to the development of domestic Cardiothoracic and Vascular Anesthesiologists through mutual information exchange, collaboration research and interaction with internal and external academic societies’ with Professor 함병문, 홍용우 그리고 조명원 in the lead and anesthesiologists in the domestic hospitals who specialize in cardiothoracic and vascular anesthesiology.” After the inaugural meeting on 1997, January 18th, ‘Korean Society of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Anesthesiologists’ was established on 1997, January 24th with 68 registered members. Officer group members at the establishment were the chairman Professor 함병문, general affairs Professor 조명원 and auditor Professor 김흥대. Operating committee members were Professor 문현수, 방서욱, 김진모, 유경연 and 이미경 with Professor 오흥근 and 김용락 as the advisor. The shared opinion about the difficulty in the practice of cardiothoracic and vascular anesthesiology among the members were that the risky cardiothoracic and vascular anesthesia had a disadvantage in the health insurance fee and that the multiple short anesthesia surgeries had greater profit than one cardiothoracic and vascular anesthesia due to the absence of health insurance fee based on the riskiness. Furthermore, the fact that there were no insurance applied to them despite the active development of new drugs and machines in foreign countries and the difficulty in the usage of inspection instruments due to the fact that many patient inspection instruments’ royalty wasn’t applied in the health insurance fee even though they had to be used during the cardiothoracic and vascular anesthesia.

The Korean Society of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Anesthesiologists has put efforts to solve the existing issues through information exchange, discussion and collaboration between the members since the establishment. As a result of the continuation of such efforts from the academic society and the members, the understanding of the cardiothoracic and vascular anesthesia had increased from the surgeons and patients. Also, with the rapid introduction of advanced country’s developed surgical techniques and drugs, the mortality rate of the domestic cardiothoracic and vascular surgeries had been showing the trend of consistently decreasing.

Annual meetings of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Anesthesiology

There has been an active research activities for the development of cardiothoracic and vascular anesthesiology and with 176 people participating in the grand first annual meeting which was held at Seoul National University Hospital in the establishment year of Korean Society of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Anesthesiologists in 1997, November 22, annual meetings have positioned as a place for listening, debating and research application of cardiothoracic and vascular anesthesiology to this year.

Both domestic and foreign interactions with the symposiums have been active since the Korea-Japan joint symposium with members of U.S., Europe and Asia cardiothoracic and vascular anesthesiology academic society at the Japan cardiothoracic and vascular anesthesiology annual meeting back in 2001, October 5-6. In 2003, Korean Society of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Anesthesiologists hosted the fifth Asian Society of Cardiothoracic Anesthesia: chairman of the organizing committee- Professor 홍용우 on Seoul Lotte Hotel on September 18-20 and had successfully completed the grand scale symposium with 500 registered members. This was the expansion of the Asian Cardiothoracic and Vascular Anesthesiologists symposium and became a stepping stone for it to become an international symposium that continues for three days with many great scholars on the cardiothoracic and vascular anesthesiology invited from U.S., Europe, Japan, China and Korea.

Based on the experience of hosting Asia cardiothoracic and vascular anesthesiology symposium, on 2019, June 6-8, ICCVA, International Congress of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Anesthesia, chairman of the organizing committee Professor 박재현 was hosted at Seoul COEX and was held as a successful symposium with over 1000 registered members. Such international academic academies were a background for the symposium to make a big step both in terms of its size and capacity.

TEE Workshop

From 2012, TEE task force team was held under the goal of providing an organized and practical education that could help anesthesiologists lead the application of echocardiography in the clinic and support the patient’s prognosis improvement. In 2013, we established the TEE task force team for more organized management of workshops and had practiced TEE monthly quizzes so that the members can get interested in TEE education content and make a smooth approach.

Enhancement of Research Power

To increase the support and outcome of the research from the members, we have been giving Abstract Award and Academic Award with strict evaluations every year since 2006. Also, we’ve been continuing to strive for the enhancement of research power through providing research funds for the manifold research between the members.

Society Members and Officer Group

Currently, this academic society has 500 members registered with a significant number of them serving an essential role in their hospitals and academic societies as well as having active activities in the field of academic research.