Dear Colleagues,

I want to thank you all for your participation in IX Congress on Thoracic Anaesthesia on November 21, 22 and 23, 2024 at the ADEIT Foundation.

We enjoyed exceptional days, marked by the professionalism and commitment of all delegates, speakers and collaborating companies. In a particularly complicated year, after the flash-floods tragedy in Valencia, your participation and support made it possible to turn this meeting into a space for learning and reflection.

A total of 60 speakers with extensive clinical experience in thoracic anaesthesia participated in this year’s congress, 55 Spanish and 5 international ones, from Europe and America.
As for the registered delegates, there were almost a hundred, also from different parts of the world, such as Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Germany, Guatemala, Uruguay, México and Chile.

The program of this 9th congress included extensive training featuring CLINICAL SIMULATION, especially in the 6 workshops aimed at acquiring skills in basic and advanced airway management; in addition, it included 2 workshops on ventilation, 1 on haemodynamics, and 1 on ultrasound applied to the airway and to anaesthesia/thoracic surgery.
In this sense, there was a redistribution and expansion of both the “stations” and the actual practice times, with the aim of optimising/maximising each delegate’s participation time.

As for the presentations, the new airway management techniques for lung isolation and/or separation, lung protection ventilation methods and general clinical management in thoracic surgery were presented, along with other types of diverse surgeries, which were presented by well-known national and international experts, including important names such as the doctors and professors Edmon Cohen, Javier García, Mert Sentürk, Pilar Argente, and Ricardo Guijarro.

Naturally, the event analysed the evolution of thoracic surgery, from thoracotomy, through video-assisted thoracic surgery (VATS), to the robotic thoracic surgery technique (RATS), in which the Valencia General University Hospital Consortium (CHGUV) is one of the pioneers in Spain.

In addition, the most useful locoregional analgesia techniques that can be applied to thoracic surgery were presented, adapting them to minimally invasive surgery processes and the ERAS programme in Thoracic Surgery, which has been implemented in numerous hospitals. There was also a PRO/CON on the usefulness of erector spinae plane block in thoracic surgery.

Finally, the congress addressed Perioperative Medicine, which aims to optimize the performance of patients who are susceptible to thoracic surgery and oesophageal surgery through programs such as prehabilitation. On the other hand, clinical protocols that reduce perioperative morbidity and mortality were reviewed, such as the optimal management of neuromuscular relaxants/reversal agents, cerebral monitoring and hemodynamics, among other topics.

Once again, we would like to thank you for your collaboration and commitment and hope to see you it the tenth congress.

Best regards,

Dr. Manuel Granell Gil
Thoracic Member of SEDAR and EACTAIC
Chief section of  Anesthesiology Department of the General University Hospital Consortium of Valencia
Staff Professor of Anesthesiology, Universitat de Valéncia.