SVS President Michael Dalsing, MD, officially opened the 2023 Vascular Annual Meeting (VAM) yesterday morning, telling attendees at the early morning Opening Ceremony: “For 76 years, vascular surgeons have been developing and integrating ideas, tenacity and collaboration across this meeting— and unless this is your very first VAM, you understand first-hand the power that comes with attending VAM.”
For those for whom VAM 2023 is their first meeting, the current moment is a wonderful one within the specialty, Dalsing said—“full of innovation, friendship and scholarship.” He hailed a bustling program of new science and special sessions, including the Frank J. Veith Distinguished Lecture, which takes place today (9:30–10 a.m.) in Potomac A/B.
Dalsing was followed at the podium by Andres Schanzer, MD, SVS Program Committee chair, who highlighted the “radical departure” from the meeting’s historical approach to postgraduate education content. “We have moved away from invited sessions to a submission of education proposals,” he said. The move, led by William Robinson, MD, Postgraduate Education Committee chair, is no longer “friends inviting friends to give talks with many of the same faces on the podium all week long,” but “entirely created by you and your peers.”
