View point on social media use in interventional cardiology.

The dissemination of scientific developments has conventionally been through two main platforms: medical journals and scientific conferences. In 1665, the Royal Society released the first medical journal, Philosophical Transactions. In 1812, the New England Journal of Medicine published its first edition. As a means to widely circulate advances in medical science in the 19th and 20th centuries, multiple medical journals focusing on medical subspecialties were subsequently founded to share newly discovered data. The European Society of Cardiology was established around World War II. On 29 January 1949, 14 National Societies established the Board and laid down its by-laws. The following year (1950), the First General Assembly, comprised of 200 people, met in Paris for the World Congress of Cardiology and discussed general cardiology topics. The field of interventional cardiology was born following Andreas Gruentzig’s first successful coronary angioplasty on 16 September 1977 using a balloon dilatation catheter in which he treated a short lesion in the left anterior descending artery. Gruentzig presented the results of his first four angioplasty cases at the 1977 American Heart Association meeting. Between 1978 and 1980, he organised four courses in Zurich, Switzerland, demonstrating his new technique in humans. In 1983, Professor Jean Marco organised the first course on angioplasty with live cases from Toulouse. Over the next 35 years, this course evolved from a French to a European gathering and finally, now an international conference with more than 12 000 attendees.1 As interventional cardiology became more widespread, due to refinements in stent platforms, pharmacotherapy and advances in other technologies, particularly in the structural arena, societies have sought options to accommodate such growth. One such option includes smaller chapters conducting their own regional or institutional workshops and meetings. With the advent of the World Wide Web, individual researchers have relied on the PubMed Medline …