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.
