Participants at the Vascular Annual Meeting (VAM) have lots more to look forward to than sunny skies, beaches and palm trees. A number of new program features are planned to add interest and value to the meeting, said Dr. Ron Dalman.

Dr. Dalman chairs the SVS Program Committee, which develops programming and content for VAM, the premiere meeting for vascular specialists.

The 2017 meeting will be May 31-June 3 in beautiful San Diego, with plenaries and exhibits set for June 1-3.

Changes for 2017 include:

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"1072","field_deltas":{},"link_text":null,"attributes":{"height":480,"width":270,"style":"width: 270px; height: 480px; float: right; margin: 2px;","class":"media-image media-element file-media-large","data-delta":"1"},"fields":{}}]]Both doctor and patient see the hand of God in a series of coincidences that changed the life of a man from the Dominican Republic.

“I’m a firm believer that things happen for a reason,” said SVS member Dr. Richard Lynn.

AFRICAN AMERICANS WITH DIABETES FACE HIGHER RISK OF PREVENTABLE AMPUTATIONS

CHICAGO, Illinois, Dec. 12, 2016 – African Americans are at higher risk for two diseases – diabetes and peripheral arterial disease (PAD) – that together threaten to cause them more preventable amputations than other populations.

Dear Friends:

Thank you for all your support, past and present, of the SVS and its many different missions. You are part of an amazing organization, and its success is due to you and each member of our Society.

The Number One Tip for Submission Success

Here’s the most important advice you will get from the program committee chair: Submit early.

The deadline is Jan. 25, 2017, but many people wait until the very last day to start the electronic submission process. If submitting authors don’t have all profile and disclosure information for every co-author before they start, they could miss the deadline.

Overall, the rate of preventable amputations has decreased in the U.S., but in California there is one sub-group for which the opposite may be true.

CHICAGO, Illinois – A new Vascular Medicine Registry will be launched in early 2017 by the Society for Vascular Surgery (SVS) and the Society for Vascular Medicine (SVM). The registry will be housed within the SVS Patient Safety Organization (SVS PSO), which was established to collect and analyze data to improve the quality of vascular care, and to do so in a neutral, de-identified environment.

This will be the first data registry to study outcomes of medical management as compared to interventional and surgical treatments.

The Vascular Annual Meeting abstract submission site opens Nov. 14 – and Dr. Ron Dalman hopes it is a beehive of activity from then until the Jan. 25, 2017, deadline.

In fact, he said, the over-arching theme of his three years as VAM program chair could be “more participation.”

“We want to make the Vascular Annual Meeting as participatory and accessible as possible. Our goal is for everyone to feel they can be part of it and contribute to it,” he said.

Dr. Iraklis Pipinos has studied peripheral arterial disease for much of his career. His research, he said, got a tremendous boost from being awarded a K08 grant, the Mentored Clinical Scientist Research Career Development Award, from the SVS Foundation, in 2005 to study the myopathy of PAD. His findings eventually led to larger NIH grants and helped the research team develop additional findings which in turn have led to new applications for funding and research.

Vascular surgery has become an increasing clinical and technical area of expertise. The Vascular Research Initiatives Conference, to be held May 3, 2017, in Minneapolis, serves to preserve the biologic side of vascular surgery and provides a forum for vascular surgeon scientists to present and discuss new research and possibilities.