Roberto M. Lang, MD, FASE

My tenure as president of the ASE will end during our Scientific Sessions in San Diego, California. It was the highlight of my academic career and I am thankful to all of you for your confidence, help and guidance. This year, with the help of our volunteers and superb staff, we have achieved many important goals:

Guidelines and Standards: Over the past year we have published guideline documents for echo core labs (July 2009), prosthetic valves (September 2009) and pediatric quantification (May 2010) and completed and approved the publication of the right ventricle document (July publication). We initiated multiple additional documents; three of them (LV function, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and tetralogy of Fallot) will be written in collaboration with ASNC, SCCT and SCMR in a multimodality document. Many of these guidelines will be written together with other echo societies, specifically EAE. At this time, an additional ten documents are in various stages of preparation and expected to be published by early 2011. Our pediatric and intra-operative councils have also taken an active role in creating guideline documents for their specific needs. Many thanks to Dr. Patricia Pellikka for her steady and tireless oversight of the guidelines program as chair of the Guidelines & Standards Committee for the past two years. She will be leaving this position to join the ASE Executive Committee next year. These efforts would not have been organized and completed in such an expeditious manner without the expert help and support of ASE Chief Standards Officer Rhonda Price.

Educational Materials: The role of our guideline documents doesn’t stop with their publication. Most offer CME credit when readers complete a post-test, and they are the springboard for many of our popular educational products, including posters and our guidelines reference book, which is quickly becoming a useful aide for our members around the world. Posters completed this year include the prosthetic valve, pediatric quantification and right heart (set to be available in July 2010). We will soon offer Spanish and Chinese versions of the popular chamber quantification poster. Our guidelines will also soon be available in a smaller pocket format. I thank ASE Chief Operations Officer Hilary Lamb for her tireless initiatives and invaluable help in the creation, preparation and marketing of our educational materials.

Our guidelines were the source of content for our recent sold-out Learning Lab course, “A Road to Comprehensive Quantification Using ASE guidelines” held in the Research Triangle Park, NC. I thank ASE Director of Corporate Relations Sherry Barrow for her assistance with the preparation of this new course. The value of these guidelines to our members is clear, as they are the most popular downloads on JASE Online, and the guidelines Web page on asecho.org is consistently the most visited page.

New Textbook: Published in June 2010, our latest educational product, Dynamic Echocardiography , is a project three years in the making. This textbook and the companion online library of cases is a comprehensive “state of the art” publication on all aspects of echocardiography written by over 100 ASE members. We hope that both physicians and sonographers will use it as a reference and self-assessment tool. I specially thank Drs. Steven Goldstein, Bijoy Khandheria, and Itzhak Kronzon for their time and expertise in bringing this product to fruition. Also, this project would never have been completed without the expert help of ASE Vice President of Research Andrea Van Hoever.

Advocacy: The advocacy road has been long and bumpy this year. Many thanks to the members who have actively participated in ASE’s wide-spread grassroots campaign against the draconian Medicare Physician Fee Schedule reductions that are scheduled to take place over the next four years. This year we used unprecedented resources, staff, volunteers, and tactics to fight for patient access to echocardiography services, including engaging in a multi-society driven lawsuit, hiring an aggressive lobbying firm, scheduling face-to-face meetings with CMS representatives, and arranging opportunities for members to meet with legislators. This fight will continue.

ASE also strongly opposed precertification of echo by private payers who are working to reduce utilization and continue to promote appropriate ordering of studies. We engaged a private payer consulting team to give ASE needed access to private payer leaders and to facilitate promotion of alternatives to precertification. ASE, with the help of Dr. Parker Ward, is also working on the development of a tool to determine appropriateness at the point of order to be offered to payers as an alternative to precertification.

I need to especially thank Drs. Byrd, Ryan and Picard, the Advocacy Committee, ASE Vice President of Communications Cathy Kerr, Vice President of Health Policy Adrienne Coats and our Counsel Diane Millman, JD for their tireless advocacy work performed on behalf of our members and the Society.

Education: ASE strives to be the primary resource for education, knowledge exchange, and professional development for its members and the greater cardiovascular community. I have made this one of the pillars of my presidency. In the past year we greatly expanded our educational portfolio by adding the State of the Art of Echocardiography and Echo Hawaii courses, formerly overseen in conjunction with the Mayo Clinic, to our offerings. We thank Drs. Tajik, Seward and Khandheria for their significant donations to the ASE Foundation (ASEF), which will enable us to fund these courses in the event of a difficult year. In addition, I would like to thank Dr. Mani Vannan for his work in finding industry support for these important educational offerings. We also hope to add the echo course held in Vail, Colorado under the leadership of Drs. George Gura and Tom Ryan to our portfolio.

Also this year the ASE Foundation launched the Learning Lab series. With enrollment limited to 40 participants, each of these hand-on courses will provide learners the opportunity to train in new technologies and techniques while interacting with world renowned faculty. Our first coursesold out in days, and we are looking forward to additional courses in August and November and an expanded series of 10-12 courses in 2011. I would like to thank Keith Collins, Consultant Sheila Fick of the Mayo Clinic, and ASE’s Conference Director Joy Traynor, CME Manager Cheryl Williams, Vice President of Education Rob Sandruck, and Meeting Planner Amber Buff for their help with organizing these meetings.

JASE, our journal, has continued to evolve, with a significant increase in impact factor from 1.4 in 2004 to 2.25 in 2008. Editor-in-Chief Dr. Alan Pearlman and the associate editors have been instrumental in ensuring that more articles offer CME, that the number of editorials is increased, and that the quality and attractiveness of the content and layout continue to improve. The Journal is now published in full color; unlike some other journals, this new attractive feature is offered to the authors at no cost to them. I appreciate the work of JASE Editorial Assistant Chelsea Flowers for her work helping guide author submissions.

Scientific Sessions: I have truly enjoyed working with Dr. Vera Rigolin and the Scientific Sessions Program Committee on the planning of every aspect of this year’s Scientific Sessions. This year we have incorporated the Imaging Village, which offers many novel and hands-on learning opportunities, into our meeting.

This year the ASEF started a new tradition at the Scientific Sessions with the First Annual ASE Foundation Awards Gala honoring the ASE awards recipients. Proceeds from this event and from the silent auction will be used to fund new research grants. I would like to thank ASE meeting staff including Joy Traynor, Amber Buff and Lindsay Coble, and ASE Marketing and Exhibits Manager Tricia Meeks for helping us organize the Scientific Sessions efficiently and with great humor. ASE Vice President of Internal Relations Mary Alice Dilday deserves our thanks for organizing the Gala and silent auction events.

Membership: Our membership, both physicians and sonographers continue to grow despite the difficult economical times. ASE has well over 2000 international members, a number that demonstrates the international value of our Society. New efforts to enhance the collaboration with other sister societies will be ongoing in our Scientific sessions. Thanks to Vice President of Membership and Fellowship Meredith Morovati for her skillful work on behalf of our members and to our Office Manager Debra Fincham, who handles FASE applications, and Membership Coordinator Tia Schulstad, who responds to members’ calls.

Research: This year we created a new research committee charged to promote and develop strategies for securing extra-mural funding for projects determined to either reinforce the value of echocardiography as a clinical tool or for placing new technologies in the broader clinical context based on multicenter trials. Drs. Pamela Douglas and Sanjiv Kaul currently lead this committee. We are actively working through the ASEF to secure additional funding for future research grants.

Public Relations Committee: Dr. Judy Mangion, chair of the Public Relations Committee, helped ensure that the Scientific Sessions research abstracts and the new guidelines received the media attention they deserved, as the committee coordinated press releases for the contrast and echo-guided interventions documents and secured media placements for the guideline on prosthetic valves. The PR Committee also enjoyed a major coup in partnering with NBA star Ronny Turiaf, whose personal medical history has led him to be a crusader for echocardiography.

Nominating Committee: Under the able leadership of Dr. Thomas Ryan, the Nominating Committee selected the 2010 Feigenbaum Lecturer and reviewed nominations and proposed the slate of officer and board nominees for 2010. Dr. David McPherson chaired a very active Bylaws Committee, which reviewed and approved proposed bylaws changes and suggested revisions to the Conflict of Interest and Disclosure statements.

Additional Committees and Task forces chaired by Dr. Mike Picard (Quality); Dr. Nancy Dalton (Local Society); Dr. Harry Rakowski (Governance Task Force and Publications Committee); Dr. Kevin Wei (Contrast Zone); Dr. Shunichi Homma (International Relations) and Dr. Linda Gillam (Foundation Campaign II) were instrumental in completing projects essential to ASE’s 2009-10 program of work. It takes a village of volunteers and staff to make ASE’s myriad projects happen, and I would like to take the opportunity to thank the committee chairs whose service on their current committees and task forces ends this month.

Finances: Our financial position is extremely sound, and I would say even stronger than what we had anticipated. With the expert help of our staff, including our ASE accountant, Steve Avent, and volunteers, we were able to overcome the recent challenging times. This financial security will allow us to complete additional future projects.

Most importantly, before ending my tenure as president of this wonderful organization I need to thank Robin Wiegerink, our chief executive officer, and all of our staff for their invaluable help. Robin, your intelligence, hard work, and guidance are crucial for the well being of our Society. Also, I would like to thank the members of the Executive Committee: Drs. Bill Zoghbi, Jim Thomas, Neil Weissman, and Sanjiv Kaul, and Sonographer Peg Knoll. I truly value their friendship and thank each of them for their work, guidance and support. I wish Bill Zoghbi, who will be rotating off the executive committee this year, all the best as he transitions to the leadership position in ACC. Our Society remains in extremely able hands under the leadership of Dr. Sanjiv Kaul, who I am sure will add tremendously to our society.

Finally, special thanks to my wife Lili, my son Gabriel and my daughter Daniella as well as my colleagues and sonographers in the Cardiac Imaging Laboratories at The University of Chicago for their support and understanding in this very busy, challenging yet very satisfying year of ASE presidency.