Welcome!
It is a great pleasure and honor to chair the second meeting of Asia-Pacific Extra-Corporeal Life Support Organization (AP-ELSO) in Kyoto in 2015.
Since the first meeting, which was held in Beijing in 2013, was a great success, all of us realized that our mission is unique and common to save the patients' lives with extra-corporeal life support even though our background has a vast variety. Indeed, the weather is from the tropics to the subarctic zones, the time difference is 6 hours across the countries, wide variety of languages and cultures. Let's get together in Kyoto in the middle of July 2015.
Kyoto is the city of history and culture, since Kyoto was the capital of Japan for more than 1 000 years. We, especially, would appreciate the richness of Japanese ancient culture during the AP-ELSO meeting by attending Gion Festival. Gion Festival has been one of the 3 largest festivals in Japan, and takes place for a month every July since 1 000 years ago to celebrate "our health". AP-ELSO in 2015 will start right after the climax of Gion Festival, and I would encourage all of you to appreciate the joy of good health during the meeting.
As a steering committee of the 2nd AP-ELSO meeting, there have been a lot of discussions regarding the scientific programs of the meeting. From lectures to simulation sessions, symposiums to case discussions, and we welcome any suggestions from all of you.
So, I welcome all of you in Kyoto in July, 2015, and I hope that all of you could enjoy the 2nd meeting of AP-ELSO.
Ryoichi Ochiai, President