Insider’s ASA: Exclusive Interview with M. Christine Stock, M.D., Chair of the Annual Meeting

Acuity Care Technology (ACT): Are there any changes to the overall meeting this year?

Dr. Stock (DS): The 2007 ASA Annual Meeting in San Francisco will be the first to incorporate all educational sessions of the annual meeting into learning tracks with the exception of Problem Based Learning Discussions and Medically Challenging Cases. Also, Scientific Abstracts will continue to be evaluated and selected by the Scientific Advisory Committee. Thus, our Annual Meeting now will be primarily based on content, resulting in a more coordinated, comprehensive and diverse curriculum.

Those subspecialty tracks are Ambulatory Anesthesia, Cardiac Anesthesia, Critical Care Medicine, Neurosurgical Anesthesia, Obstetric Anesthesia, Pain Medicine, Pediatric Anesthesia Regional Anesthesia. The last two tracks added this year, Fundamentals of Anesthesiology and Professional Issues, were tasked with ensuring that all important areas of anesthesiology that may not be covered in the subspecialty tracks are represented.

Additionally, for the first time this year ASA members were asked to submit session proposals for consideration for inclusion in the various track programs.

ACT: What are some exciting workshops or

sessions we can expect?

DS: The meeting offers workshops that span the entire meeting, in every track. There are 10 tracks, each with many workshops. The Rovenstine Lecture and the Plenary Session are two of the high points of the meeting. The Rovenstine Lecture will be given by Dr. James Cotrell, and I am very excited that the Plenary Lecture will feature Nobel Prize laureate Sten Lindahl speaking on “oxygen.” This lecture presents state-of-the-art translational research in anesthesiology.

ACT: Is there any one trend in anesthesiology that participants can expect to learn about the most this year?

DS: There is no single trend dominating our field at this time. The meeting is specifically programmed into blocks so that there is no single aspect that anyone hears “most” about. Rather, the meeting is balanced with a broad curriculum within each track, and therefore across the entire meeting.