About

Brief introduction of the Korean Society of Echocardiography

In parallel with improvement in the quality of life and the graying of society, cardiovascular diseases are progressively increasing, which requires a kind of accurate, non-invasive, unharmful modality in establishing diagnosis. In this respect, echocardiography is of paramount importance with high accuracy and practicality and has already established its position in the diagnosis and follow-up of patients with a variety of cardiovascular diseases.
The Korean Society of Echocardiography (KSE) is an academic society with an 18-year-old history.

Since the first introduction of echocardiographic equipment in 1968 to the Republic of Korea, creation of the KSE had been increasingly recognized. After a successful host of 4th APCDE (Asian-Pacific Conference on Doppler and Echocardiography) in Korea in 1991, the enthusiasm to establish the KSE was further grown and the foundation of KSE was finally achieved and announced in 15th, February, 1993. Since 1993, the KSE has provided opportunities to cardiologists as well as internists and physicians to improve knowledge in the field of cardiovascular images and more importantly patient care. The KSE was officially entered into the Korean Medical Association as an associate member in 1996 and now an effort to become a regular member is being increasingly made.

Elected as the first president, vice president, and secretary were Prof. Sam-Su Kim, Prof. Ok-Kyu Park, and Prof. Jong-Hwa Bae, respectively. The first chief director, Prof. Nam-Shik Chung, was elected in 2001. The usual terms of the president, vice president, and chief director were each 2 years.
At present, the structure of the KSE consists of the executives (president, vice president, chief director, managing Editor, and auditors), the board of directors and thirteen committees, and 2224 members.

The KSE is holding the scientific meeting, symposium, and educational lectures periodically. The first scientific meeting was held in April, 1993 and after that it was held annually, resulting in total 23 scientific meetings being held till now. Educational lectures have been given 14 times and echocardiographic symposia have been held more than 50 times. From the annual scientific meeting in 2009, in order to instill enthusiasm into the heart of young cardiologists, the KSE has generated the Young Investigator Awards to be granted to cardiologists aged less than 40 years who are recognized for outstanding researches in the field of cardiovascular images.

In addition to the domestic scientific meetings, members of the KSE have actively participated in international meetings including the American Society of Echocardiography and the European Society of Echocardiography. Thanks to the efforts made by all members of the KSE to improve the position of the KSE in the world, the KSE is expected to host the 15th APCDE (Asian-Pacific Congress on Doppler Echocardiography) in April, 2011.

Thanks to active academy action of the KSE members, a lot of abstracts and papers have been published in renowned international conferences and journals, raising the KSE’s status to a higher level internationally. As a result, joint symposium in conjunction with the American Society of Echocardiography has been held since 2008. In addition, in 2009, the KSE and the European Association of Echocardiography collaborated in holding a joint symposium.

In 2010, annual meeting of the American Society of Echocardiography was held in Sandiego, CA. Many participants from 68 different nations presented a total of 329 abstracts, of which more than 10% abstracts were presented by KSE members. Prof. Dae-Won Sohn, Prof. Jae-Kwan Song, Prof. Jong-Won Ha, and Prof. Goo-Yeong Cho participated the meeting as ASE faculties and Prof. Nam-Shik Chung won the achievement award, implying that a significant rise in the KSE’s status to a higher level. Furthermore, the current chief director, Prof. Ho-Joong Youn, the former chief director, Prof. Jae-Kwan Song, the managing director, Prof. Hae-Euk Chung, the academic director, Prof. Jong-Won Ha, the Editor-in-chief of Journal of the Cardiovascular Ultrasound (Official journal of the KSE), Prof. Goo-Yeong Cho, had a business meeting with Loberto Lang and James. D. Thomas, who are the chairman group of the American Society of Echocardiography, reaching a bilateral agreement regarding continuous relationship between the two societies.

Over the past 15 years, the mission of the KSE has not been changed: to promote and foster knowledge and research in the field of echocardiography in Korea. To achieve this, the main focus of the KSE is, of course, echocardiography. However, to be in line with a global trend to multimodality approach to cardiovascular diseases in recent years, the KSE now tries to collaborate with colleagues with expertise in other imaging modalities, with which we believe that patient care could be improved beyond our imagination.

Publications

Journal of the Cardiovascular Ultrasound, the official journal of the KSE, was published biannually from 1993 to 2004 in Korean or English, and has been published quarterly since 2005. It covers a wide range of original research related to echocardiography, case reports as well as reviews. In 2010, Journal of the Cardiovascular Ultrasound has been registered and the articles published in the journal can be indexed in PubMed.