The 2024 Vascular Annual Meeting (VAM) in Chicago showcased emerging talent in vascular surgery through a moderated Poster Competition held over two days of the conference. This event provided a platform for research and recognized excellence among the next generation of vascular surgeons.
Hassan Chamseddine, MD, a research fellow from Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan, secured first place for his poster titled “Comparative analysis of stroke rates in arch TEVAR [thoracic endovascular aortic repair]: Total endovascular repair plagued by high stroke rates.” Chamseddine expressed his gratitude to the organizing committee for the award.
“It feels tremendous to be recognized for the research we’ve been doing at Henry Ford Hospital. We hope this project helps move endovascular stent grafting of the aortic arch forward in the future,” he said.
The competition, organized by the Society for Vascular Surgery (SVS) Program Committee, involved a two-round judging process. In the first round, accepted abstracts were divided into topic groups for poster presentations. The 11 winners selected from each group advanced to the final round and presented their posters in a championship round on the final day of VAM in host venue McCormick Place’s Skyline Ballroom.
Jason Lee, MD, one of the competition moderators from Friday, emphasized the importance of the event with how “the poster competition has always been one of the favorite opportunities for people to quickly showcase their research projects. Being able to deliver a message in three minutes is a skill that we want researchers to learn, and providing immediate feedback through a quick question-and-answer session makes it very educational.” Lee will head the VAM Program Committee as chair for VAM 2025 in New Orleans.
The competition on Saturday was moderated by Edith Tzeng, MD, professor of vascular surgery from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center; Matthew Eagleton, MD, the current SVS president and chief of the Division of Vascular and Endovascular Surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital-Harvard Medical School; Joseph Mills, MD, the immediate past-president of the SVS; and Michael Stoner, MD, professor in the Department of Surgery at the University of Rochester Medical Center.
Lee outlined the competition’s benefits for both presenters and attendees. The combined 180 minutes of presentations allowed attendees to view numerous research projects from future leaders in the field, he said. Lee pointed out that top posters often become highly competitive abstracts for publication.
“For many of the people who have won the poster competition, that was often the first paper they had published, and it’s exciting. It’s often been the younger part of our attendees and trainees, and that allows them to have that experience of seeing a project all the way from inception to presentation to publication,” Lee added. Third and second places were awarded to Chloé Powell, MD, a vascular surgery resident at Michigan Medicine in Ann Arbor, and Arash Fereydooni, MD, a vascular surgery resident at Stanford Health Care in Stanford, California, respectively. Powell was recognized for her work titled “Duplex screening for renal artery stenosis plus selective second trimester angioplasty to reduce maternal morbidity and improve pregnancy outcomes among women with hypertensive disorders of pregnancy.” Fereydooni was recognized for his research, “A standardized, scalable and automated open-source CT [computed tomography] AAA [abdominal aortic aneurysm] diameter measurement tool using deep learning.”
“The SVS Poster Competition and championship highlights the innovative research being conducted in vascular surgery and provides a valuable learning experience for participants. Each topic’s best poster is seen up on the podium, allowing researchers to gain exposure and recognition for their hard work,” said Lee.
