Pediatric Respiratory Diseases Integration of clinicalsciences into Practices

The Annual medical conference of the Thai association for pediatric respiratory and critical care medicine

Pediatric Respiratory Diseases “Integration of clinical sciences into Practices” February 7, 2007

Introductory Remark by Prof.Subharee  Suwanjutha, the past president of the organizing committee of the Thai association for pediatric respiratory and critical care medicine.

Professor Gozal  Associate Professor Narong
The organizing committee and the members of the Thai association for pediatric respiratory and critical care medicine
Distinguished audience
Colleagues and participants

It is my great pleasure and honour to have this opportunity to welcome you to the annual conference of the association.  The theme for this year is “pediatric respiratory diseases : Integration of clinical sciences into practices”.

First of all I would like to congratulate the organizing committee for selecting the above theme which represents one of the most important aspects of the specific goal of our association.

As we all realized, physicians and nurses who are dealing with acute and chronic respiratory diseases, in orders to establish the diagnosis or management of the patient who come with respiratory problems, it is quite important and helpful to integrate clinical sciences into our practices.

Most or almost all of the problems are usually solved by applying the basic knowledge in clinical sciences into our practices in order to obtain the most satisfactory outcome for the patients.

As being the past president of this association and have been working with our committee and colleagues right from the beginning I have had the privilege of following and observing closely the progress of our association which has been working under the multidisciplinary and collaborative team approach.  I have also seen the challenges and efforts of our colleagues and acknowledged the great success which I am really grateful and admire all of the committee members of the association and our Thai colleagues not only the medical and paramedical personnel but also the  drugs and equipment companies who have given us the tremendous support throughout all of these years since the day of the foundation of our association in December 1998 until present.

Moreover, we have been very fortunate to have several renowned speaker, lecturers  and colleagues mostly from the United States of America and Canada who have contributed a great deal for the foundation and success of our association. 

First of all I would like to acknowledge the contribution of Professor Mark C. Rogers, the past Chairman of the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine    from the John Hopkins University Hospital, Professor Geoffrey A. Barker, the past Chairman of the Department of Critical Care Medicine, the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada and also the past president and one of the founders of the World Federation of Pediatric Intensive Care and Critical Care Medicine, both of them have helped us a great deal in starting the new era and the progress in development of pediatric intensive care and critical care medicine in Thailand and still continue providing us with both scientific and institutional support since.

The other three persons I would also like to acknowledge, the first two are Professor Andrew Colin, the former Associate Director of Department of Pulmonology, and Associate Professor John Arnold, senior faculty staff of the Department of Critical Care Medicine, the Boston Children Hospital, Harvard University.  Both of them have given us their generous support and efforts in providing  collaborative training for our fellows in pediatric pulmonology and critical care, during their 2 months elective period since the year 1998.

Last but not least I would like to acknowledge Professor Allen Goldberg, the past president of the American College of Chest Physicians who has kindly contributed a great deal to the success of our pediatric respiratory home care program.  There are several renowned lecturers from the United States of America who kindly accepted or invitation to come to Thailand and gave excellent lectures and seminar in pediatric pulmonology and critical care for our annual conference such as Professor Gerald Loughlin, the Former Director of Division of Pediatric Pulmonology, Professor David Nichols, the Director of the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, from the Johns Hopkins University Hospital.  Both of them not only came and gave lectures for our annual medical conferences but also helped us in providing further training of our faculty staff in pediatric pulmonology and critical care as well.

Regarding the scientific activities of the association, from the past up to the present time our annual scientific program have presented a wide coverage of important topics in respiratory diseases and critical care with update on research and practice in well established areas of respiratory and critical care concern. 

However, this year we are very fortunate and honoured to have Professor David Gozal who is one of the world leading experts in the field of pediatric sleep medicine from Kosair Children’s Hospital Research Institute, Department of Pediatrics, University of Louisville School of Medicine and Associate Professor Narong  Simakajornkoon, the director of sleep center, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center  who has been giving us the support in our scientific work as well as training our junior faculty staff in sleep medicine.  Professor Gozal and Associate Professor Narong will be  our plenary speakers.  Professor Gozal will speak on recent advance in sleep medicine.  Associate Professor Narong will speak in the symposium on neuromuscular diseases and respiratory management.  I am quite certain that we will learn a lot from their experiences.

We are very proud of our national and international collaboration that our association has made in the past up until present.  We hope to continue for long. 

I truly believe that the program for our annual conference and workshop this year will meet the practical needs of all of our distinguished participants who came from the institutes and hospitals throughout the country.  We are very pleased and honoured to have your attendance.

For our distinguished participants, we very much hope that you will enjoy the experience you gain from this conference and the workshop and look forward to the opportunities to provide the formal and informal exchange of ideas and discussion with you.  We believe that the useful professional experience you will gain from the the experts and workshop will help you to be able to apply to the management of your patients with respiratory problems for the betterment of their health and good quality of life.

May I take this opportunity to give a special thanks to our major sponsor Tyco health care and Saint Medical and also MSD Company including all companies who kindly give support for this meeting.  Without all of your support or scientific meeting will not be as successful as this. 

I would like to express my sincere appreciation and thank all of our organizing committee and the editorial board of our association who have been working very hard for many months and put all of their efforts in order to achieve the best outcome for the participants.   

Would you please kindly join me in giving big hands to all of them. 

May I now extend a special welcome to Professor Gozal and Associate Professor Narong who kindly accept our invitation and came far away from the United States of America to give the lectures and seminar for our conference.  We wish you to have a pleasant stay in Thailand and safe trip back to your country.

May I wish every success to our conference and also to all of our participants and our colleagues and all the companies who have continuously given our association the strong support for all of these years.

Thank you all again.