Dear Colleagues and Friends,

It is with great excitement that we invite you to attend the "4th World Congress on Ultrasound in Emergency and Critical Care Medicine", to be held in Porto Alegre (Brazil) on March 5-8, 2008.

For the fourth time the conference will gather experts from all over the world. These ultrasound experts strive daily to develop point-of-care ultrasound throughout all pre-hospital and in-hospital critical environments, such as emergency departments, operating rooms, critical and intensive care units, anesthesiology services, land-based and helicopter-based EMS, tactical and peace-keeping arenas, disasters, space flights, remote areas and scarceresource locations.

The attendees of the conference will be exposed to a variety of outstanding scientific and educational events that will show how ultrasound, performed on critical patients in critical environments, enhances clinical decision making and
problem solving in most triage, diagnosis, treatment and monitoring scenarios. Real-time simulation workshops will show the effectiveness of the ultrasoundenhanced ABCDE management in trauma care and advanced cardio-respiratory life support situations.

Particular focus will be placed on "primary ultrasound". Primary ultrasound is intended to be a primary, sustainable, acceptable tool that is incorporated into the primary health care of scarce resource rural communities, in which two thirds
of the worlds population currently lives.

The "hands-on" experience society members have had in the developing world and experience from previous meetings has led us to outline these expected actions of WCCU 4, promoting:

Discussion of Winfocus Critical Ultrasound Guidelines;

Primary ultrasound in scarce-resource areas of South America and other developing countries;

Point-of-care ultrasound in well-developed Critical Care and Emergency Medicine facilities;

Ultrasound practice by non-medical staff in scarce-resource and critical scenarios;

High-tech integration, such as tele-ultrasound (envisioning difficult access and scarce-resource areas), teleconferencing, web casting.

Our next WCCU will be held in Porto Alegre, a beautiful city in the extreme south of Brazil. Porto Alegre is well known as a popular tourist destination and is an important social and political centre in the region. The city hosted four of the seven meetings of the World Social Forum, bringing up to 155,000 people from around the world for a conference. Porto Alegre is also the site where the first and only residency in Emergency Medicine in Brazil was created 11 years ago, following the creation of SAMU de Porto Alegre in collaboration with the French SAMU. This pre-hospital unit was the model for the development of the entire system in the country, which currently covers 926 cities and nearly 93 million people. Porto Alegre is recognized as an important centre in Critical Care in Brazil, concentrating some of the most important investigators in the field of critical care medicine.

Even though Emergency Medicine is not yet recognized as a specialty in Brazil, Porto Alegre will hold the First National Emergency Medicine Congress in September 2007.

More than 1,000 registrants are expected, not only Emergency Physicians and Critical Care specialists, but paramedics and nurses from the pre-hospital field, as well as many medical students. Extensive experience with small and large medical meetings and other congresses, a well established and robust infrastructure and an incredibly supportive local team lead us to choose Porto Alegre as the location for the next WCCU. While we have the perfect structure for our congress, we also have a challenge: we are putting in practice the real Winfocus dream. We are bringing ultrasound to a critical world region where its application will have an immediate impact in clinical practice, and certainly in improving patient care. Critical ultrasound can save lives. We will be taking it to an area where Emergency Medicine is in its first steps, where primary care is deeply deficient and where Critical Care is a luxury limited to the big cities. This is not the reality of Porto Alegre, but it is there where all those whose paths have taken them to the scarce-resource areas of South America will go to hear us.

Finally, traveling to Brazil is an unique opportunity for tourism. When flying to or from Porto Alegre you can plan additional days on your trip to the Caribbean-like beaches of North-eastern Brazil, explore the wonders and fun of Rio de Janeiro, or travel south to our neighbor Buenos Aires, in Argentina.

We look forward to seeing you in Brazil!

Luca Neri President of Winfocus (2007-2008)	Giovanni Guido Cerri Honorary President President of WFUMB - World Federation for Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology
Eliézer Silva President of the Brazilian Congress (2008)	Michael Blaivas President of Winfocus (2008-2009)
Fernando Silva President of the Organizing Committee	Daniel Pedrollo President of the National Commitee