Facts and principles learned at the 32nd annual Williamsburg Conference on Heart Disease

William Clifford Roberts, MD, and Hassan Farooq, MD

The December 2004 conference on heart disease in Williamsburg, Virginia, was the 32nd such annual conference to be held in that city. The conference has been directed by one of the authors (WCR) since it began in 1972. It usually attracts about 200 enrollees, most of whom are repeat attendees. The conference provides 20 hours of continuing medical education credit, and nearly all of the speakers are nationally and internationally recognized. It is one of the longest-running cardiology courses sponsored by the American College of Cardiology. Its unique feature is that each presentation is 90 minutes, which allows most speakers time to discuss more than one topic and answer questions. The proceedings of the December 2002 and the December 2003 conferences were summarized in previous issues of Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings, and this article summarizes the proceedings of the 2004 conference.