The Cardiovascular and Interventional Radiological Society of Europe (CIRSE) will mark its 40th anniversary during the society's September meeting in Barcelona, Spain.
Interventional radiology emerged in 1964, when Dr. Charles Dotter defied sceptics and insisted that angiography, until then a purely diagnostic tool, could be used to actively treat patients, according to a historical account posted on the CIRSE website. "Percutaneous transluminal angioplasty, as it would later be called, was born. Dotter’s revolutionary concept of “catheter therapy” soon sparked the development of other minimally invasive tools and techniques."
CIRSE was formed in 1985 from a merger of the European College of Angiography and the European Society of Cardiovascular and Interventional Radiology (SCVIR). In May 1986, the first CIRSE congress and joint meeting with the American SCVIR took place in Jerusalem, followed by meetings in Porto Cervo, Berlin, Paris, Brussels, and Oslo, with steadily rising attendance figures of up to 800.
The society opened its headquarters in Vienna in 2005, and hiring permanent staff marked a new era for CIRSE. "Drawing on the expertise of several then newly-established committees, including one dedicated entirely to programme planning, the scientific programme of the CIRSE Annual Congress kept becoming increasingly comprehensive, multi-faceted, and interdisciplinary."
In the following years, the society introduced conferences to focus in specific areas of interventional treatments. The European Conference on Interventional Oncology (ECIO) was established in 2008, the biennial International Conference on Complications in Interventional Radiology (ICCIR) was first introduced in 2010, and the European Conference on Embolotherapy (ET) followed in 2019 as a continuation of GEST Europe. The Interdisciplinary Endovascular Aortic Symposium was first held during the CIRSE annual congress in 2015.
"Investments in member services, including the addition of group membership, attracted practitioners from all over the globe, and encouraged increased participation by national societies. Membership rapidly expanded, increasing from around 1,500 in 2005 to almost 10,000 today, including growing numbers from outside of Europe," CIRSE noted.
CIRSE 2024 in Lisbon offered a record number of sessions and attracted more healthcare professionals than ever before, the society noted. All content from this meeting is currently available via the CIRSE Library.
CIRSE 2025 will be held from 13 to 17 September. The deadline for abstract submission is 20 March. This year features a new abstract type focusing on AI and emerging technologies in interventional radiology, and it will include another instalment of the intravascular ultrasound case competition.
For more information on the 40th anniversary, go to cirse.org/40years/#2025.
