Holiday newsletter 2022

Dear members

I’m now four months in to the CEO role and I must say it’s been a real joy to meet so many of you. You’ve all been really welcoming and generous with your time and expertise and you’ve really helped me settle in, so thank you. I knew before joining the PVRI, that the charity had an impressive reach, but what I didn’t fully understand is the absolute dedication and commitment our members bring to our network. You’re all wildly busy professionals, yet you find the time and energy to nurture the PH community, sharing your knowledge and skills in a way that’s just inspirational. I can’t wait to meet many more of you in the year ahead. Now as the year draws to a close, I need to say some thank you’s on behalf of the Board and the staff team.

Firstly, thanks to our outgoing President Werner Seeger, for his leadership during the difficult years of the pandemic, and for putting on such a great Congress this summer in Athens. As Werner steps down, we’re delighted to welcome our new President for 2023-24 Kurt Stenmark. Kurt has put a great team together to plan our next Congress in January 2024 and we look forward to welcoming you to the PVRI team’s new home town of London.

Secondly, I’d like to thank Jason Yuan and Anna Hemnes, our fantastic Pulmonary Circulation Editors In Chief. The journal had another great year and we really are indebted to them and to everyone involved. 

Thirdly, thanks go to all of you who have collaborated in our Task Forces and IDDI workstreams, especially to all the fantastic Co-Chairs and to the four tireless IDDI leaders: Sylvia Nikkho, Peter Fernandez, Ray Benza and Mark Toshner. With their help and leadership, we hope to be able to bring you another Drug Development Symposium next summer, and I look forward to meeting many of you face to face at last. The Task Forces and workstreams have made great progress and run some fantastic events during the last year and we’ll bring you more news of these achievements in our next Annual Report.

Finally, on behalf of the Board and the staff team, we wish you all very happy holidays, and send every best wish for a happy, healthy and successful 2023.

Karen

Thank you to Werner Seeger, for all of the excellent work he has carried out during his PVRI presidency from 2020-22. Werner's leadership saw us through a turbulent couple of years through the pandemic, where we transitioned to a new way of working and saw the launch of PVRI2021, our monthly digital webinar series. Thankfully, we were able to meet again in person for PVRI2022 in Athens, where Werner handed over to our president elect, Kurt Stenmark. Kurt is honoured to take on this new role, and we look forward to seeing all he will achieve over the next two years.

PVRI2022 Athens took place from Wednesday 22 June – Sunday 26 June 2022 and was attended by over 350 delegates from around the world. Thank you to our community for making this year's meeting another great success. We were delighted to see everybody in person, once again, for an excellent meeting that featured the field's highest quality science. We hope to see you for the PVRI2024 London meeting.

Thank you to our IDDI group who have put together several articles this year, covering a range of key topics across PH.

• Tobacco Smoking as Risk for Pulmonary Hypertension – an update from the PVRI Working Group on PH Group 3
• Inhaled Treprostinil in Pulmonary Hypertension Associated with Interstitial Lung Disease: Hope on the Horizon
• Clinical significance of pulmonary hypertension in interstitial lung disease: A consensus statement from the PVRI Working Group on PH Group 3
• The effect of borderline pulmonary hypertension on survival in chronic lung disease
• Pulmonary Hypertension in COPD: are we only seeing the tip of the iceberg?

We also recently published an article by our iPVD group, to celebrate World Aids Day:

• World AIDS Day: Some recent insights on HIV associated pulmonary hypertension

In this series, we invite anyone in the PH community to join our calls and discuss the latest news and advancements in pulmonary hypertension. The community call is scheduled to take place on the last Thursday of every month and will always be open to all.

Our most recent call took place on 23 November, with hosts Katrina Barry and Dr Jason Weatherald, who were joined by Tatiana Kudryashova and guests Fancesco Valzano and Slaven Crnkovic, to discuss the latest developments in PH in November. You can watch the recording here.

Our next call will take place on the 31 January 2023.