Category Archives: Past SCVP Meetings

New Orleans, LA

USCAP returned to the Bayou in 2023.  The weather was pleasant, the food was delicious, and the meeting was wonderful. It was great to be at a time of normalcy and comaraderie was high. The venues for our meetings were unique in that we spent an afternoon at the Tulane Medical School building and had dinner at Brennan’s restaurant, home of Bananas Foster.

Our SCVP Distinguished Awardee, John Veinot, gave a rousing speech and we congratulated Liang Lu as our Young Investigator Awardee. There was also a change in leadership as Marc Halushka passed the baton to Joe Maleszewski to lead the SCVP for the next two years.

Pictures from New Orleans 2023 are below. Clicking on one will start a swipe show.

The 2024 SCVP Companion meetings will be headed to Baltimore, MD. We look forward to seeing many of you in the “City that reads.”

Los Angeles, CA

It was wonderful to return to an in-person meeting for the first time in two years. Despite having the meeting in Los Angeles, California for the second straight time, the world is in a much different place than it was in 2020. We fortunately arrived at a time when COVID cases in LA were at a nadir, allowing for some near-normal (or new normal) social interactions. It was wonderful to be among so many colleagues again to trade stories and catch up on each other’s lives. Sadly, so many international colleagues were unable to attend due to COVID restrictions and travel challenges.

This year SCVP pulled out all of the stops to be a truly innovative society. Due to changes in the USCAP schedule, we were forced to move more of our offerings to Saturday. Not a problem. Dylan Miller arranged our first ever (?) event to be held in a movie theater, the Regal LA Live. After a small hiccup on AV problems, in which we were asked to move theatres (but not until the movie finished playing in the adjacent theatre!) we opened our Saturday event with our Young Investigator talks. These were a mix of live and videotaped presentations, all of which were excellent.

After a brief intermission, we picked up the show with some great Mary Ann Sens Open Mic(roscope) night cases from many of our members. Lots of suggests were offered on the cases from both the live audience and the audience participating via Zoom.

The final event of the program was the Distinguished Achievement Award presentation given by Dr. Richard Mitchell, who spoke of his journey between research and education. The lecture was so moving he was given a best supporting actor Oscar on the spot. Throughout the presentations, the SCVP members were able to relax in the stadium seating chairs and at least one member remarked this was the most comfortable lecture hall we had ever used! With our bellies full of movie theatre popcorn, we all headed off to prepare for the next day’s activities.

The Sunday morning sessions discussed “Racially Related Risk Factors for Cardiovascular Disease.” These 4 talks, given by Drs. Karol Watson, Peter Wang, Billie Fyfe-Kirschner, and Rick Vander Heide covered a number of topics on how cardiovascular diseases differ among races. These included racial disparities in health care delivery, racial differences in e-cigarette use, the impact of APOL1 on cardiovascular disease, and the impact of race on COVID-19. The session was very well attended and covered new ground for our society. Our general business meeting after the sessions highlighted much of the progress made in the last year, including increasing our activites to year-round events.

Sunday evening’s banquet was held at Fogo de Chao. There was great food (that never stops coming) and wine. Dr. Bobby Padera led a memorable roast of Rick Mitchell which included a wonderful Zoom adventure and story about tearing out a bathtub. No wonder Rick won an Oscar at our event!

In addition, Monica De Gaspari was given our young investigator award.

Other great cardiovascular events were held on Monday and Tuesday. Our cardiovascular evening session was entitled “Cardiac Pathology that’s Electrifying! The Pathology of the Cardiac Conduction System and Arrhythmic Disorders” and was a great coverage of many of the things that can go wrong in the conduction system.

The 2023 SCVP Companion meetings will be headed to New Orleans, LA. We look forward to seeing many of you in the Big Easy. Pictures from Los Angeles 2022 are below. Clicking on one will start a swipeshow.

The friendly confines of your house or office.

Wherever you have been sheltering in place for the past year is where you likely engaged in USCAP 2021. Due to the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, the USCAP and SCVP meetings went virtual. Out was the in-person socialization, and in was Zoom and other virtual presentation methods. Fortunately, spirits were high and the comraderie was strong.

Events kicked off on March 13th with the SCVP General Business Meeting, where the initiatives of the past year were shared. A new slate of officers were elected. Before and after the business meeting, members had some limited socializing using Gather.Town avatars.

The next event was the Young Investigator Award presentations. These were all taped with a live Q&A event at the end. All of the presentations were excellent with the winner being Phil Hurst. This event went right into the Mary Ann Sens SCVP Open Mic Event where there were several interesting cases presented. As usual, Dylan Miller had a great and complicated case to share.

Cardiovascular events continued with a live Q&A to discuss the presentations of our panel covering the topic of “A Novel Coronavirus Meets the Cardiovascular System: What We Know and How We Know It.” The panelists were Ornella Leone, Carolyn Glass, Charles Lowenstein and Kate Hanneman. The event was moderated by Max Buja and Jim Stone. An excellent summation of the presentations and our current state of knowledge of SARS-CoV-2 now appears in Cardiovascular Pathology.

The meeting continued on March 14th, with a Q&A on the CV Evening Specialty Conference presentations. A number of fun cases were presented by Drs. Melanie Bois, Mary Sheppard, James Atkinson, and Charles Marboe. Dr. Carmela Tan moderated the event. A poster session occured on March 15th, where one could enter into a chat with the poster presenter to learn more about their exciting work. Finally, on March 17th the CV platform presentations occurred. No Distinguished Achievement Award was given due to the virtual meeting circumstances.

Altogether it was not the meeting we envisioned, but it was the meeting we had. A special thank you to Dylan Miller and Joe Maleszewski for working under serious duress to make this a successful event. We all hope to try again in 2022 to have an in person meeting in sunny Los Angeles.

A few screen captures from the virtual meeting of 2021 are below. Clicking on one will start a swipeshow.

Los Angeles, CA

SCVP and much of the world’s pathologists enjoyed a few days of lovely weather in sunny Los Angeles, California. Despite concerns of coronavirus and the need to tap elbows to say hello, our members persevered and contributed to an excellent meeting. Events kicked off with our Young Investigator Talks and our fourth annual Mary Ann Sens Open Mic(roscope) Night. Unfortunately Dr. Sens got snowed out of the meeting due to bad weather in the midwest. The young investigator talks included ventricular tachicardia, sensitization and rejection, hypertensive heart disease, and myocarditis. There was a lot of intrigue around fascinating cases brought forward by trainees during the Open Mic part of the event. Sadly, no one brought a Fabry+sarcoid+amyloid case for 2020. We were also without our superstar cameraman Bahig Shehta.

The Sunday morning sessions were billed as “A Look at Sudden Cardiac Death with 2020 Vision” and it did not disappoint. The sessions were very well attended by our membership and many other pathologists including numerous autopsy pathologists. A variety of topics around the theme of sudden cardiac death were covered. The speakers were Cristina Basso, Karen Kelly (filling in for Peter Lin), Julie Huss-Bawab, and Fabio Tavora. The keynote lecture was given by our Distinguished Awardee, Allan Burke. Dr. Burke presented “Sudden Cardiac Death Cases and What They Have Taught Me (and All of Us)” built around a number of excellent cases.

Our general business meeting after the sessions showed that our society is strong and active.

Sunday evening’s banquet was held at the Palm restaurant. There was great food and wine and the Baltimore contingent even approved of the crab cakes. Dr. Tavora, with the help of resident remembrances ably roasted Allan Burke. In addition, Joe Westaby was given our young investigator award.

Other great cardiovascular events were held on Monday and Tuesday. A variety of vascular diseases were covered in the excellent Cardiovascular Evening Session.

The 2021 SCVP Companion meetings will be swinging over to Baltimore, MD. We look forward to seeing many of you there. Pictures from Los Angeles 2020 are below. Clicking on one will start a swipeshow.

National Harbor, MD

SCVP made it as close to the American capitol of Washington DC as possible without actually being there. Instead, the USCAP meeting was held across the river at National Harbor, Maryland. A fine meeting was held that again highlighted all of the greatness of our society. Events kicked off with our Young Investigator Talks and our third annual Mary Ann Sens Open Mic(roscope) Night. A number of interesting topics were covered including how to do intraoperative cytopathology adequacy on a cardiac biopsy, intravascular lipoproteinosis, renaming histiocytoid cardiomyopathy and others. The prior year Dylan Miller showed a mashup case of myocarditis+amyloid. Not to be outdone, Joe Maleszewski showed a mashup case of giant cell myocarditis+amyloid with the amyloid nearly disappearing in a subsequent biopsy. We are looking for a Fabry+sarcoid+amyloid case for 2020. Scour your archives! The festivities were held at the AC hotel. There was an excellent spread of food and beverages and the audio visual materials were highlighted by a hastily built podium with a nice Open Mic sticker on it.

The Sunday morning sessions were billed as “Heart Transplantation Surveillance.” We filled the room and needed extra chairs so our audience could see multiple excellent presentations covering cell-mediated rejection, antibody-mediated rejection, surgical issues of cardiac allograft rejection, and emerging methods of monitoring for cardiac allograft rejection. The speakers were Annalisa Angelini, Dylan Miller, Ahmet Kilic, and Bruce McManus. The keynote lecture was given by our Distinguished Awardee, Gayle Winters. Her talk “The History of the Endomyocardial Biopsy in Cardiac Transplantation – Still the Gold Standard” was a wonderful historical accounting of how we got to where we are in 2019 with transplant biopsies. Excellent talks all around. If only there was coffee during the coffee break.

Our general business meeting after the sessions saw the passing of the baton to Jim Stone, our new president. As well, Dylan Miller coordinated a fabulous group picture that nicely captures the past and future of our great society.

Sunday evening’s banquet was held at McCormick and Schmicks a local seafood joint in the National Harbor. There was great food and wine. Barbara Sampson and Suzanne Powell wonderfully roasted Gayle Winters. In addition, Paul Hanson was given our young investigator award.

Other great cardiovascular events were held on Monday and Tuesday culminating in the Cardiovascular Evening Session. It was very interesting to get a legal perspective on cases in which things went bad.

The 2020 SCVP Companion meetings will be moving to the west coast, being held in Los Angeles. We look forward to seeing many of you there. Pictures of National Harbor 2019 are below. Clicking on one will start a swipeshow.