ABEA Council Meeting

Marriott Hotel & Marina

San Diego, California

Leucadia

October 3, 2009

4:00 pm

 

Drs. Milan Amin, Peter Belafsky, Andrew Blitzer, James Burns, Ellen Deutsch, David Eibling, Gregory Grillone,  Ian Jacobs, Jamie Koufman, J. Scott McMurray, Gregory Postma, Michael Rothschild, Clarence T. Sasaki, Dana Thompson

 

Excused:         Drs. Mark Courey, Marc Remacle

 

Saturday, October 3, 2009 4:00 pm

 

READING OF MINUTES

• Minutes from May 27, 2009 Council Meeting were approved and seconded as written

 

PRESIDENT’S REPORT  - Andrew Blitzer, MD, DDS

1. There has been a lot of discussion since the last Council meeting about the Clinical Practice Guidelines for Hoarseness before it was published and then it was published with inaccurate information and without appropriate discussion.  Dr. Blitzer received 10-12 e-mails a day from people about this asking how was he going to respond.  Dr. Blitzer met with Marvin Fried after the last council meetings of ALA and ABEA and spoke with David Nielsen which went no where.   Dr. Amin sent Dr. Blitzer a survey that Michael Johns was doing which Dr. Blitzer sent to the council.  Because this was not advertising a course or a drug company it was appropriate to give our e-mail addresses out for the survey.  The survey asked point by point if you agreed with it and why or why not.  This was a straight forward survey.  Dr. Blitzer wanted to table this discussion until Dr. Fried is finished with his meeting with ALA and can join us at 5:00 and we can discuss how the senior leadership in ALA and ABEA for laryngology can respond.  Dr. Fried did speak with Jonas Johnson who will be willing to publish a rebuttal paper in the Laryngoscope if we decide to write one.

 

2. Program Update
1. Marshall Strome will give the Chevalier Jackson Lecture and will talk about the evolution of endoscopic laryngeal cancer surgery; where it is coming from and where it going to.
2. Clarence Sasaki will receive the Chevalier Jackson Award.
3. Bill Lawson, Dr. Blitzer’s mentor will be the Guest of Honor
4. There will be some presidential citations given.

 

3. New Council Position – Development Officer
1. Dr. Sasaki has expressed an interest in raising funds for our organization.  If people want to do the work, it should always be encouraged.  Dr. Sasaki has been raising funds for the past year and is important to the longevity of the ABEA.  It was approved that this will be an ad hoc committee until the next change to the By-Laws. 
2. Dr. Blitzer suggested that in addition to the past presidents Dr. Sasaki has contacted about raising money the council members pledge to the committee.  Dr. Blitzer pledged $1,000.00. 
3. Because of the scrutiny of the legislature in cutting off corporate sponsorship it is important that we begin development now. 
4. Dr. Sasaki and Dr. Postma will come up with a plan to raise money to be presented to the council next spring.  We need to look at ways to have the money do the things we want to do.  Traditionally one of the things that has been done is that the President gives the council a gift.  Dr. Blitzer is going to give a contribution to this fund in the name of each council member.  This could set a precedent for future presidents.

 

4. K J Lee is publishing a new book on symptom based medicine.  This will be a series of medical specialties that will outline the symptom and give the questions you should ask, what is the differential diagnosis, and based on what you find what is the appropriate treatment.  Dr. Lee said that Congress has already ordered 50 of these books so it is important that we contribute to make sure that it isn’t garbage.  What Dr. Lee has so far doesn’t overlap on what we do.  Dr. Blitzer felt this was too important to be ignored so he discussed this with Dr. Fried and suggested that this be done as a collective contribution of senior people in ABEA and ALA. 

1. Anything that will be contributed will be reviewed by the Council before submission. 
2. They have asked Dr. Aviv and Dr. Postma to contribute information on dysphagia.
3. Dr. Roger Crumley and Dr. Gaylon Garrett will contribute on voice disorders.
4. This will be another alternative to the Clinical Guidelines pushed through by AAO-HNS and will help buffer some of the effects of that.  Dr. Lee’s book is going to come out whether we contribute to it or not so we should make it representative of how we collectively best care for the patient.  It should also be stressed that this is a fairly new field and is continually evolving.

 

5. Dr. Remacle had a conflict today and asked Dr. Blitzer to present the prospect of a joint ABEA and ALA meeting with ELS in 2012.  The ELS will come to the United States in 2012 and hopefully a number of our members will go to their meeting in 2014.   The ELS has 400 laryngologists.  If 100 of their members pay and come to our joint meeting and perhaps present a paper that will be a great opportunity.    There is already a precedent for joint meetings.  We can develop a better relationship with ELS.  There is funding by the French government for the French laryngologists to travel.
1. Dr. Fried will work with Dr. Blitzer and develop a joint task force, two members from each organization to pursue this.

 

6. AAO Hoarseness Guidelines

1. Dr. Fried joined the council to further discuss this.  It is felt that there is a need for senior leadership response to the Guideline published by AAO.
2. Dr. Fried said these guidelines have implications far outside laryngology or broncho-esophagology.  The implication for the lack of involvement of groups of our specialties in critical decision making is very apparent.  This involves not only ALA and ABEA but the ARS and other societies.  Dr. Fried has discussed outcomes research with others.  The ground swell among people who actually are the referral individuals besides otolaryngologists to laryngologists is enormous.  The Academy doesn’t realize the depth of feeling about what they have done.  Dr. Fried feels strongly that our two societies should make a statement and do it fairly and concisely. 
3. Dr. Koufman said there are two levels of concern.  Level 1 is what might be considered by third party payors who say they will not pay for consults.  The second level is the process within our Academy.  Dr. Koufman was a reviewer on this guideline and said that what was written is a catastrophe.  Very few of our council were invited to review this and they went over it point by point and presented it to the Board of Governors.  Dr. Koufman said the third level is the concept that health care can be made less expensive and that we are the state of the art where evidence based medicine that could be reviewed by outsiders to come up with reasonable guidelines is preposterous. 
4. Dr. Fried said that the ALA was not consulted.  Dr. Koufman said she called both Dr. Kennedy and Dr. Nielsen about this as President of ABEA and received no response from either.  Dr. Fried and Dr. Blitzer met with Dr. Nielsen after COSM in Phoenix and told them they thought this was a bad idea and the polite thing would be to include the societies and get their feedback.  They were told that was not the process, they weren’t interested and goodbye.  Basically, AAO said this is what it is.
5. Dr. Blitzer said that this is something that is being done throughout medicine; they are taking symptoms and trying to set evidence based guidelines without input.  But if they do it the wrong way it defeats the purpose. 
6. Dr. Deutsch said that she was on the guidelines development task force which selects the topics and the group votes on which topic has the most relevance based on whether it impacts on different age groups, different economic levels and how broad the impact is and then decide if it should be a multispecialty guideline or a specialty guideline.  Anyone who wants can put in a proposal and the one that gets the most votes is selected.  Cerumen guidelines got the most hits on the web site of anything the Academy has ever put out. 
7. Hoarseness is important; it affects kids, it affects adults, it increased quality of life, etc. so in the long run guidelines would be good for our society, but only if it is given in the correct perspective that is the best treatment for the patient.  Dr. Deutsch said that once hoarseness was selected she was on the committee to put the guidelines together.  The selection process of who should be on the committee was not open so far as she knows.  They included pulmonologists, gerontologists, speech/language pathologists, neurologists but there was no gastroenterologist on the panel.  There were four members of ABEA, although they weren’t all listed as representing ABEA as they were also members of other societies.  To her knowledge the selection process for the committee was not open.  ALA was not represented nor invited.   It was not a transparent process.  They had their mind made up on how they were going to address the issue.  There was a review process which was designed like reviewing an article for a journal and the review was secret.  She wasn’t aware of who did the reviews and then after the reviews were in comments were sent to everyone on the committee and three or four editors did the final rewrite and the committee had no oversight on that process. 
8. Dr. Deutsch felt like there were two issues:

                                               i.     The selection process for who was on the committee needs to be looked at.

                                              ii.     Evidence based medicine doesn’t accomplish all that is needed to accomplish because it is inherently retrospective.  This isn’t sufficient to provide optimum care to the patient.  There are well established methods of treatment and we need literature to tell us which is better than another and these guidelines from the AAO don’t provide that.

9. Dr. Thompson was also on the committee and when she read the final draft she wrote some fairly strong comments, including a very strong statement that laryngology is an evolving field and there is little evidence based medicine in the specialty at this time and this has to be made clear in the guidelines.  She doesn’t feel that her comments were taken into account nor those of any other expert in the field.  They were told that it was a done deal and what is done is done.  She felt that the goal of the Academy was to get hoarseness on the radar screen so that primary care physicians understand that if a patient has hoarseness for a certain period of time they need to be referred to an otolaryngologist. 
10. Those on the committee didn’t think they were producing a document that was supposed to be something that everyone was to follow.  Dr. Thompson felt she was duped and that there is no evidence based medicine on hoarseness but there are excellent studies and this is not  what the studies show. 
11. Dr. Koufman acquired “hoarseness guidelines” and “hoarseness guidelines.com”.  We need to make that an active site that has ongoing input that covers this issue. 
12. Dr. Fried said the ALA is one of the oldest specialty societies and they had no input on this.  Dr. Thompson said she asked where the senior members of the specialty were in the participation of this committee.  These things were addressed but ignored.
13. Dr. Fried has no issue with the concept of establishing guidelines but he felt the AAO had an agenda and they were going to push it.  Dr. Fried felt that sensorineural hearing loss would have been a better choice for a guideline because there is data to back it up.  There were 32 pages to cover hoarseness; no one is going to read that much, especially when there is a lack of data to support it and putting it out as supported by the AAO and its members is a major issue. 

                                               i.     If a general practitioner has a patient who has been hoarse for three months he may say that he is within the guidelines and because the patient has a smoking history or age it is still within the guidelines.

14. Dr. Fried has spoken to Jonas and they will publish a rebuttal in the Laryngoscope.  We have to protect our other specialties from symptoms of diagnosis because if this is the accepted process going forward, rhinosinusitis, hearing loss, vertigo, everything that we as otolaryngologists can take care of is going to be in jeopardy. 
15. Dr. Blitzer and Dr. Fried went to Dr. Rick Rosenfield and said that before this goes out they could arrange to have very senior people review it before it gets published so that it is accurate and he told them no, that this was not a paper it is a report from a committee and will be published as is. 
16. Dr. Koufman said that whatever we publish needs to be clear that the welfare of the patient is number 1.   She also feels that this is a political agenda. 
17. Dr. Thompson said that the committee members were assigned sections of the guidelines and if they had comments about other areas they were told that was not their assigned subject. 
18. Dr. Nielsen said “The laryngology leadership is out of touch with the literature”. 
19. Dr. Blitzer proposed that we set up a joint committee of ALA and ABEA members who would like to participate and put together a cohesive draft of a criticism of the process that could be published as a letter to the editor and a paper to make the statement that this is an evolving field and there isn’t necessarily a lot of literature on it.  He said that a man from the Harvard School of Public Health looking at evidence based medicine said that in our field there are no papers to show that packing a nose stops bleeding and therefore it shouldn’t be paid for.
20. Dr. Rothschild said that perhaps the selection process of the committee and how they were dealt with could be brought up before the Board of Governors and separate it from the paper to be published.    The ALA and ABEA both have representatives on BOG and the Specialty Council should be advised because it is important to let the other specialty societies know that this could happen to them.
21. Dr. Blitzer said that if we publish a rebuttal paper and insurance says something shouldn’t be covered because it isn’t in the guidelines, we can show them the rebuttal of why it should be. 
22. It was determined that there will be two documents:

                                               i.     A rebuttal paper that states where we see the current state of the art of laryngology in regard to hoarseness and have it published in the Laryngoscope stating that hoarseness is an evolving field and is not a comprehensive view but is an introduction guideline and that the reason for our objection is that patient care is going to be diminished by following some of the incorrect guidelines.

                                              ii.     A second document that says the process AAO used is fundamentally flawed. 

23. Dr. Blitzer said that Mickey Stewart should be involved because he is notable for evidence based medicine and had criticism of the process. 
24. Two joint committees will include:

                                               i.     Dr. Koufman, Dr. Postma, Dr. Amin and Dr. Fried will get people from ALA to draft the paper and should be based on a scientific process.  It should state that there is not enough scientific data to make strict guidelines; however best practices would describe the following things that should be done.  Dr. Postma suggested that those who actually served on the committee address the fact that what was published was not what they intended. 

                                              ii.     Dr. Thompson, Dr. Koufman and Dr. Deutsch will work on the rebuttal letter.  Dr. Fried or someone from ALA should be involved in this because they were not involved in the AAO discussions at all as well as Mickey Stewart.  The letter should address the specific points as to what should be done for a patient coming in with dysphonia. 

                                             iii.     In addition to what we will do as ABEA and ALA, individuals can publish articles or write letters negating the guidelines published by AAO.  The New York laryngologists have met and are willing to put out a press release representing them.

                                            iv.     Dr. Koufman has prepared a point by point rebuttal and a letter to the Board of Governors prepared to be signed by the Voice Committee of the AAO and by the leaderships of the ABEA and ALA.  Dr. Koufman will e-mail this information to the council for review to see if they feel it should be what is submitted.  Dr. Koufman has also prepared a press release.

                                             v.     Dr. Thompson felt that whatever we do is to point out to the Academy how this could have been done better so that in the future when they want to do something it is done well and correctly and that if we take the high road and write a rebuttal paper we will come out much stronger than if we attack them.

                                            vi.     Dr. Blitzer said that further discussion could be held via e-mail after this meeting to see if our approach has changed. 

 

7. International Members
1. We have many international members, most of them are corresponding.  We have a lot of international members, particularly from Japan, who come to these meetings and present papers and some from South America.  Brazil is the number one country that has people  who attend this meeting every year; they have 6,000 otolaryngologists.  It would be interesting to have the International Committee of which Dr. Remacle is currently chair get one person from South America, one person from Australia, one from New Zealand, one from Japan and one person from Europe to be on the committee.  The International Chair could rotate every other year to see if we can recruit active members from these other countries to come and participate with us.  We should encourage them to become members and participate which would increase our ranks and give us a greater depth of information.

 

8. Annals
1. The ALA had a fight with the Annals over several issues, one of which was that in order to be a member of ALA it might take 10 years so they don’t have a young membership and they proposed that they develop a new category so these people could be part of the ALA and receive the Annals.  The Annals objected primarily because of the cost.   The ALA approached Jonas at the Laryngoscope who gave them a very good deal and a certain percentage of the papers will go in automatically with their own editorial board. 

                                               i.     Dr. Blitzer didn’t know how many of our young members get the Annals and how much money and space do we actually get for publishing all of our papers and he wondered how long it had been since we negotiated a contract with them.  The last contract was signed when Dr. Shapshay was editor which was very long ago.  Dr. Blitzer asked Dr. McMurray to talk with Dr. Har-El who was editor for a long time to find out what kind of relationship he had with the Annals and then approach the Annals to see what they would like to offer us to renew our relationship with them.  The contract we have was dated 1994 and renews automatically every five years unless written notice no more than nine months and less than six months is given.  One suggestion was that perhaps they could fund and publish the panels.  Because the ALA has negotiated away from them perhaps they will be willing to work with us. 

                                              ii.     We could also approach the Laryngoscope and tell them that we work a lot with the ALA.  Mark Courey is the editor for the ALA.  Dr. McMurray will bring his report to the spring meeting.

 

9. President Elect Report – Michael Rothschild, MD
1. Dr. Rothschild expressed his honor at being selected to be president and looks forward to learning from Dr. Blitzer.  He has been talking with Dr. Deutsch about some long term goals.

 

10. Vice President Report – Ellen Deutsch, MD
1. The next Guidelines Development Task Force meeting will be December 7.  Dr. Deutsch is unable to attend because of a previous engagement so Dr. Koufman has agreed to go and the AAO knows she is attending.
2. Progression – Dr. Deutsch has drafted guidelines for progression to get new people involved.  We currently don’t know who is on the various committees and that would be one way to get new people involved buy inviting committee members to our council meetings.  We need a master list of committee members and wanted to be in touch with them at least annually even if the committee doesn’t do much.  We need to identify the people who are energetic and want to be involved. 

                                               i.     One suggestion was for the council members to recommend people who are interested.

                                              ii.     We could also send an e-mail notice out to the membership and ask them if they are interested in becoming involved and what committee they might be interested in.  We could maintain a pool of these individuals for the committee chairs to select their committee members from.

                                             iii.     Dr. Deutsch said that by the By-Laws committee membership is three years so we could start at the spring meeting and assign new leaders to those who have been committee chairs for the longest; perhaps take the longest third this year, then the next third, and so on.  We don’t want to have a big turnover all at once.  Those people rotated off as chair could still be on the committee.  The panels rotate every three years so after that committee has presented a panel they could be rotated off.

                                            iv.     Dr. Deutsch prepared a grid of how the officers could proceed through if you continue to do work and still have an interest.  The President and the President Elect are elected but there are four others, Secretary, Treasurer, Vice President, and Editor are generally the people who move into the President-Elect and then President.  The argument for predictability for those two positions is that these people are experienced and they know the history of the organization.  The argument against that is that it might be inflexible if someone really stands out as being exceptional they don’t get moved up.  We can work things out so that if we do want a predictable progression we can get it set in place.  One model would be to go with the people who are currently on the council and follow the By-Laws as far as how long the terms of office are and move people up the progression with one exception to the By-Laws.  The other is similar except that we put Peter Koltai back in the progression because he stepped out of the leadership because of his current position as President of ASPO.

                                             v.     There is no progression in the By-Laws but we should have a culture of knowing how to do this so people aren’t ignored. 

                                            vi.     Dr. Blitzer related an experience with ALA.  When Gayle Woodson became President she looked at the roster of council members and realized that Dr. Ford had never been on the council so she approached him to see if he would be interested.  He told her that he was stepping down as Chairman in Wisconsin and had some ideas of what he wanted to do and that he had been a member of ALA for 25 years and had never been invited to be involved and wasn’t interested now.  He wasn’t ignored, just never thought of but he could have made good contributions along the way.  He suggested that they needed better structure so they don’t forget about people.

                                           vii.     Dr. Rothschild suggested that one way to change this would be for the nominating committee to come up with the names several weeks in advance and give all the membership time to come up with additional nominations.  The way it is done now is the nominating committee presents the names and those few members who attend the business meeting have less than 2 minutes to come up with other nominations.

                                          viii.     Dr. Rothschild suggested that we have something that states that in order to serve as President you have to have been one of the other four top offices within a certain amount of time, giving those who may have rotated off before becoming President a chance to be President.

                                            ix.     A grid would also give us a balance between pediatrics and oncology and between east and west, etc.   We don’t need to be rigid but we want to make sure all voices are heard.  The By-Laws also give us term limits and we need to be sure we are in compliance.  The nominating committee recommends the President, President-Elect, Secretary, Treasurer and Editor for election.  Dr. Koltai could be in the pool of applicants for President because of his past service. The committee chairs are not elected.

                                             x.     The nominating committee can select the names and have them posted on the web site for members to view before the spring meeting and come to the meeting prepared to make additional nominations.

                                            xi.     We will discuss this again in the spring meeting.

 

11. Program Committee
1. There was a discussion about the program set up to receive abstracts.  Last year Dr. Thompson had to manually put them in order after they were scored.  She talked with Mark and hopefully that has been corrected.  The abstracts come in marked for podium presentation or poster or either.  She found that frequently people who wanted poster only scored higher than those who wanted podium only. Hopefully it has been fixed so that it can be sorted any way you want. 
2. Dr. Thompson said that frequently submissions come from foreign countries and they don’t always feel comfortable getting up to present but their work is very good and can be put forth as a poster.  There are occasions where someone who marked podium presentation didn’t make the cut and were given the opportunity to present a poster but refused.
3. Dr. Koufman said that once the abstracts were in she and Dr. Thompson, who was program chair, met for a weekend and went over them.  Working together they were able to resolve some issues where the title was inappropriate, or the talked with they authors and worked out concerns.  Dr. Deutsch said that one problem they ran into when she was program chair was when an abstract ranked as a poster but got into a presentation slot. 
4. Dr. Thompson said that traditionally the person selected as the foreign body winner should have a five minute slot to present their work.  
5. Dr. Burns said the deadline for submission of abstracts is October 15.  Later submissions can be accepted but we don’t need to advertise that we will accept them after October 15.  It was later last year because the meeting was held later in the spring. 
6. The Program Committee by the By-Laws consists of the Program Chair, President, President-Elect, Past President and immediate Past Program Chair.
7. Dr. Burns said that Mark set up the scoring sheet so the program committee can get in and do the scoring.  

 

12. Treasurer’s Report – Gregory Postma, MD
1. Dr. Postma said that the Melon and Wachovia funds are positive at the last report. 
2. We have established a President’s Circle account.  This account has a statement that says essentially that it is for the educational mission of the ABEA at the discretion of the Council.  We don’t want to use this money for operating expenses but to cover resident travel, research or other educational opportunities.
3. Dr. Koufman said that she is in the process of redoing her will and she is going to leave some money to the ABEA.  She suggested that when someone is approached about contributing to the President’s Circle if they would consider leaving something to the ABEA in their will.

 

13.  Editor’s Report – Scott McMurray, MD
1. Dr. McMurray said the 2008 Annals should be at the printers now.  Leora sent them the labels they use to send it out. 
2. They will now start working on the 2009 Annals. 
3. Dr. McMurray will give us an update on his discussions with the Annals at the spring meeting.

 

14. Secretary’s Report – Gregory Grillone, MD
1. Dr. Grillone feels that he has big shoes to fill with Dr. Koltai gone but he appreciates the honor.
2. Dr. Koltai took him to the COSM Secretaries meeting to introduce him to the other members.  The biggest item on that agenda was the selection of the Chairman of the committee.  Stan Shapshay was proposed and he ended up on the short list.  The short list consists of Dr. Marvin Fried and Bob Miller.   They will vote for the final candidate at the next meeting.  Hopefully Dr. Shapshay will be elected.
3. The footprint for the upcoming COSM meeting is attached to the agenda.  There was a mistake with the dates but the correct dates are April 28 to May 2.   ABEA has Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning sessions.  This is probably the footprint we will probably follow through at least 2012.  If we do end up doing a combined session with ELS he imagines we will want to use the Wednesday or late Thursday but is probably something that will have to go before the COSM secretaries to get approval just so we don’t affect the overall footprint.  

                                               i.     Wednesday – Thursday is new for us.  We will have the council meeting and President’s dinner on Tuesday then the sessions on Wednesday and Thursday. 

4. There is a new requirement of the ACCME for a post-evaluation.   We are supposed to look at the recommendations for future meetings taken from the evaluation forms completed at COSM.   Leora sent out the post-evaluation survey asking if people have implemented in their practice anything they learned from the meeting. 
5. Dr. Grillone received an e-mail from ACS in preparation for the next meeting.  One of the things that needs to be submitted is whether we want to raise the registration fee.  It was determined that because of the present economy we should not raise it. 
6. Dr. Blitzer thanked Leora for staying on after her terms with Dr. Davis and Dr. Koltai.

 

15. Development – Clarence Sasaki, MD
1. Dr. Sasaki said that he has collected $13,000 and is very encouraged about the process.  We will continue on.
2. Dr. Sasaki said that as he has approached some of the past Presidents they indicated that they felt abandoned by the society because after they are off the council no one cares about them.  Dr. Aviv suggested that there be a way for the President to say on the council or be available for a period of three years after the served.   It was felt that it would be good to hook the new members of the council up with older members as mentor and they will have an opportunity to communicate with them.  The Council Dinner included past Presidents.  The council meetings are also open meetings so if they had information as to the date and time they could attend.  Dr. Koufman said that she has been involved with the council for about 10 years and she is going to miss it when she goes off.
3. There was a discussion about how the scholarship fund should be administered.

 

 

 

 

16. Committee Reports
1. Program Committee – James Burns, MD

                                               i.     There is some confusion as to where COSM is going to be held and ACS wants us to market it as Paris/Bally's because there are two venues associated with the meeting and the meetings will be at the Bally’s and most of the rooms will be at the Paris. 

                                              ii.     The two calls for abstracts have gone out with the deadline of October 15.

                                             iii.     Dr. Burns spoke with Ken Cooper with the Annals and he will run an ad for the meeting in the Annals.

                                            iv.     There were a lot of comments from the evaluations of the last meeting that six minutes was too short to present.  In the past we have had a template of between six and eight minutes.  Last year we had 36 paper presentations using a six minute frame.  The year before we had 42 paper presentations.  In 2007 there were only 24 papers using the eight minute frame but that was also the year of the Manuel Garcia talk which took 40 minutes.  Dr. Burns asked if there were any strong feelings in the council of six minutes versus eight.  The time will also depend on the number of papers submitted.  It was felt that more papers at six minutes is the best forum.  There were also a number of comments on the evaluation forms that there wasn’t enough time for discussion. 

                                             v.     Dr. Blitzer said that there are always people who do not adhere to the six minute time so they will send directives that they will be limited to six minutes.

                                            vi.     Dr. Thompson suggested that Dr. Burns assign someone to be responsible to work with the AV people because she spent a lot of her time at the back of the room which wasn’t the best use of her time.

                                           vii.     Comments on the evaluation forms indicated that the panels were well accepted so we will continue with a panel at the end of each session.  Dr. Amin encouraged us to have the panels published because they are a good marketing tool for the society.

1.     Dr. Blitzer asked Dr. McMurray to discuss this with the journal to see if they will publish the panels.  Dr. Rothschild said the panels are recorded and available on the web site.

2.     We will ask ACS if they have the audience response system that we could use.   One of the other societies has the audience response system.  Dr. Burns will inquire.  Leora thinks it could be ARS.

 

2. Awards and Thesis Committee – Jamie Koufman, MD

                                               i.     Dr. Koufman asked to be taken off the Awards and Thesis Committee because she has submitted a paper and it wouldn’t be appropriate to be on the committee.  The immediate Past President serves as chair of the committee, the program committee chair and the current President constitute the committee.  Dr. Blitzer asked Dr. Sasaki to serve on the committee with him and Dr. Burns.

 

3. Pharyngeal – Esophageal Committee  - Milan Amin, MD

                                               i.     Nothing to report.

 

4. New Technology – J. Scott McMurray, MD

                                               i.     Nothing to report.

 

5. Research and Education – Mark Courey, MD

                                               i.     Absent

 

6. International Committee – Marc Remacle, MD

                                               i.     Absent – Dr. Blitzer gave Dr. Remacle’s information about the ELS in his remarks.

 

7. BOG – Gregory Grillone, MD

                                               i.     No report – they meet on Monday night.

 

8. Representative to ACS

                                               i.     No report

 

9. Web Master – Michael Rothschild, MD

                                               i.     It is going well.   The four panels from the last two years are available.

                                              ii.     He has some very good historical information on the web site.  He has taken some of the historical information from the newsletter and put it into the historical section.

                                             iii.     Dr. Koufman will send Dr. Rothschild some key words she would like to be able to link to.

 

10. Difficult Airway – Ian Jacobs, MD

                                               i.     They ran a third annual pediatric airway foreign body course that Drs. Jacobs, Karen Zur and Deutsch attended.  It was a very nice course.  They are going to expand it to a more regional approach.  He is also on the broncho-esophagology education committee so he will be working with them.  David White is interested in doing a course in Charleston.

                                              ii.     The governing articles of the specialty society will be meeting on Monday and he will report on that at the spring meeting.

 

11. Specialty Society Advisory Council (SSAC) – Ian Jacobs, MD

                                               i.     The SSCA met in March in Washington, DC to form the Governing Articles of the SSCA.  The AAO has voted for the approval of a By-Laws amendment allowing two voting seats on the AAO Board of Directors for the SCCA Chair and Chair-Elect.

 

12. Foreign Body Accidents – Dana Thompson, MD

                                               i.     No report

 

13. Oncology – James Burns, MD

                                               i.     The position statement from the oncology panel has been submitted.  Thanks to Dr. Sasaki for brokering that.

                                              ii.     The panel members are the people who are part of his committee.  They will have a mini-seminar tomorrow morning that is sponsored by ABEA.  He discussed whether mini-seminars are something that other committees could do with the blessing of the ABEA and be another way to get our name out there.

 

14. Council at Large – Peter Belafsky, MD / David Eibling, MD

                                               i.     No report

 

17. Committee members – Dr. Blitzer asked that if you know the people on your committees please give them to Leora.