Category Archives: Past SCVP Meetings

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.

Vancouver

SCVP’s excursion to the true north was widly successful. The SCVP held Saturday night, Sunday morning and Sunday night events. The Sunday event featured our Young Investigator Talks and our second annual Open Mic(roscope) Night. A number of interesting topics were covered including ARVC, myocarditis+amyloid, AMR, vulnerable plaques, Fabry’s disease and others. The festivities were held at St. Paul’s Hospital in downtown Vancouver. An excellent spread of food and beverages were supplied by the host Michael Seidman.

The Sunday morning sessions were billed as “Myocardial Maladies: An update on congenital and acquired diseases of the myocardium.” It featured excellent presentations covering myocardial toxins, cancer therapy-associated cardiotoxicity, lysosomal storage disorgers and a clinical perspective on myocarditis. The speakers were Stephen Cohle, Rick Mitchell, Vidhya Nair, Les Cooper and Kricket Seidman. The keynote talk was given by one of our two Distinguished Awardees, Christine (Kricket) Seidman. Her talk covered the efforts of Kricket and her spouse Jon on tackling genetic forms of cardiomyopathy. Excellent talks all around.

Sunday evening’s banquet was held at The Loft at Earls Yaletown. They served a lovely family-style spread of great food. Attendees took in each other’s great company and Rick Mitchell enjoyed roasting the Seidmans. In addition, Carolyn Glass was given our young investigator award.

The 2019 SCVP Companion meetings will be held in National Harbor, Maryland which is a stone’s throw south of Washington, DC (and not particularly close to Baltimore). We look forward to seeing many of you there. Pictures of Vancouver 2018 are below. Clicking on one will start a swipeshow.

San Antonio

Once again, the SCVP held two excellent companion meetings. Each offered a new twist for the society. The Saturday evening session was held at the campus of the University of San Antonio. The event consisted of two parts. The first part was the Young Investigator Day presentations. The second part was our first ever attempt to open the floor to anyone. It was our Open Mic(roscope) Night and it was a huge success.

The second event was our first ever joint companion meeting with the Binford-Dammin Society of Infectious Disease Pathologists. This meeting was comprised of four outstanding talks by Drs. Castonguay, Pritt, Milner and Padera. These talks were followed by our Distinguished Achievement Awardee Jay Fallon. Dr. Fallon’s keynote lecture pertained to his recent work in using deep RNA-sequencing to find novel infectious agents in cardiac tissues.

The Sunday evening awards banquet was at Biga on the Banks. A delicious meal preceded our hearty congratulations to Jay Fallon and the announcement of our young investigator awardee, Melanie Bois.

During the USCAP meeting, there were excellent presentations during the poster session, the oral session and the evening specialty conference. With the exception of a drenching rain storm on Saturday, San Antonio was warm and inviting to all attendees.

We look forward to another excellent meeting with great topics at the 2018 USCAP meeting to be held in Vancouver, Canada.