Speaker: Professor Quek Swee Chye, Chairman Medical Board, NUH

Paediatric cardiovascular medicine has evolved in an unprecedented fashion over the past few decades. Present state-of-art includes a slew of modern diagnostic capabilities in the form of advanced imaging to treatment modalities, such as therapeutic cardiac catheteristion. Device closure of septal defects, balloon valvuloplasty of stenotic valves and stent implantation for narrowed vessels are now possible. This is even more amazing, considering that hearts are small and vessels are tiny in babies and children. As for surgery, from the humble beginnings at the time when the Patent Ductus Arteriosus (PDA) was first ligated, we now perform complex open heart surgery for every variety of heart defects in the spectrum of congenital heart disease (CHD). Success in outcomes has led to improved survival which has now spawned a new subspecialty of Adult Congenital Heart Disease (ACHD). So what does the future hold? With advances in IT, big data, next generation sequencing and personalised medicine, it is envisaged that only more revolutionary challenges are to be expected.

Registration & Breakfast at 7.10am, talk begins at 7.40am.