Dear colleagues,

I welcome you to this first communication for the Annual Hellenic Respiratory Congress, the highest educational activity of our specialty. The Annual Hellenic Respiratory Congress will take place from December 12th to 15th at the Grand Hyatt Hotel. At the conference we will develop all the educational components of the specialty and be informed about all the latest developments. The Congress will coincide with the second phase of the Hellenic Respiratory Society's campaign aiming at recognizing and promoting our specialty. This year we have organized 4 pre-conference tutorials, thoracic ultrasound in the clinic and ICU, lung function as well as diffuse interstitial pulmonary diseases that will focus exclusively on the private care pulmonologist. Two major conference seminars have been planned: the first regarding chest malignancies where we will collaborate with the Hellenic Society of Thoracic Surgery, the Society of Oncology and the Radiology Society. It will also contain practical skills attributing to thoracic malignancies (EBUS, pleural catheters). The second conference seminar will deal with home mechanical ventilation and will focus on pulmonologists of primary health care. As in previous years we will host international speakers and of course for the fifth consecutive year we will have the honor to guest the incoming president of ERS, Professor Silke Ryan who will give a lecture entitled "The association of cardiovascular diseases with sleep apnea syndrome". A new educational process will exist in this conference, similar to the one encountered in international conferences and that is  the ‘’ Meet the expert’’. Finally, as every year we will award young investigators and clinicians with research and clinical fellowships, we will support a social action - as we have been doing for the last 4 years by giving a part of the proceeds of the conference to charity. In the next months I will contact you again to keep you informed about the various events related to our conference. I therefore invite you all to support it with your participation in order to demonstrate the central message of the Hellenic Respiratory Society ''The Pulmonologist at the Epicenter''.

Kind regards,

Stelios Loukides
President Hellenic Thoracic Society