The 97th annual meeting of the USCAP was held in Denver, Colorado and was by
all accounts a resounding success. Three-thousand three hundred and
fifty-eight (3358) physician-pathologists were in attendance.
The General Registration of the meeting was the second highest in the history
of USCAP attendance (last year in San Diego being the highest ever-3550).
These attendance figures continue to make the annual meeting of the Academy
the largest gathering, by far, of physician-pathologists in the world. Indeed,
for the past seven years we have regularly had 3000 or more in attendance.
620 of the registrants/attendees at the Denver meeting were from
international countries outside of the US and Canada. The countries (and the
number of international visitors from each country) included: United Kingdom
(54), Spain (48), Italy (46), Mexico (46), Netherlands (46), Japan (44),
Australia (40), Korea (33), Brazil (30), Ireland (29), France (24), Germany
(24), Greece (19), Argentina (17), Switzerland (16), Taiwan (16), Czech Republic
(12), Turkey (10), and all the other countries 1-10 friends. Thus, in toto, 620
international visitors from sixty-one countries outside of the USA and Canada
were in attendance (18.4 % of our total registrants). Pathologists from all 50
states of the US and 7 Canadian provinces were in attendance.
Of the registrants, 1818 were Regular, Sustaining or Emeritus members and 830
were Junior Members . There were 280 pathologists in practice who were not
members and 186 residents/fellows who were not members (yet). Thus including
the Residents, Monitors and other students, there were 1044 residents/fellows at
our meeting. Each of the last several years we have had a thousand plus
residents/fellows/students attend our Annual meetings. The percentage of
house staff attending the meeting who are members of the Academy are for the
past seven years - 41% , 69%, 67%, 66%, 76%, 84%, 88% respectively. This
probably relates to the effective recruitment we have had of pathology house
staff/fellows/pathologists-in-training in the last 8 years. In July 1999 we had
520 Junior Members; in the following eight-nine years we recruited over 5200
additional Junior Members (many of which have now become Regular Members). Our
present "steady state" of Junior Members is over 2400. Our total USCAP
Membership is over 10,600 physician-pathologists.
Dr. Chris Crum served a distinguished and quite active term as President of
the USCAP. He turned over the gavel and the Presidency to Dr. Victor Reuter as
the new President of the Academy.
2396 scientific abstracts were submitted for evaluation; tying last year’s
all-time record in submitted abstracts (all submitted electronically). The
quality of the submitted abstracts remains very high. A record 1708 were
accepted after "blind" peer review (71.3 % acceptance). The review is conducted
by at least 4 individuals from the Academy (3 "experts" in the area and one from
the Academy Education Committee). The percentage of acceptance is generally
dependent upon the space available at the hotel (which is usually booked 5-6
years in advance of the meeting). 1428 abstracts were presented in the poster
sessions (a record) and 280 as platform sessions. We try to accommodate as many
quality poster sessions as space allows. Abstracts were submitted from
throughout the world (from approximately 40 countries and about 350 academic
medical centers and institutions). This was the sixth year for the USCAP to have
electronic submission of our scientific abstracts (in conjunction with Marathon,
Inc). These scientific abstracts are now online searchable by topic, disease,
word, technique, author, institution, etc (www.uscap.org).
The USCAP website: www.uscap.org
consistently has the last three years of scientific abstracts (approximately
5000) which are now searchable by topic, disease, author, etc for the last 3
years.
As noted before, 1044 pathologists-in-training and students attended the
various portions of the meeting. 58% of submitted scientific abstracts had a
first author who is a pathologist-in-training (compared to 38%, 43% and 53%
the last three years). (this does not count the house staff/fellows that are
second, third, etc authors). Over 376 Stowell-Orbison Abstracts were
submitted. 238 were accepted for the Stowell-Orbison competition, and an
additional 47 were accepted as regular abstracts (total 75.8 %). Once again, the
"scores" for the accepted Stowell-Orbisons were actually higher than the scores
for the "regular" abstracts accepted for presentation (i.e,
Non-Stowell-Orbison). There were four co-equal Stowell-Orbison Awards presented
and three Certificates of Merit. The recipients, in alphabetical order of first
authors name, are as follows:
The recipients of the Stowell-Orbison Awards are:
 |  | Andrea N. Grin
Measuring Extent of DCIS in Breast Excision Specimens: A Comparison of Four Methods
AN Grin, G Horne, M Ennis, FP O'Malley
Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto, ON, Canada; University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada; Applied Statistician, Markham, ON, Canada |
| | Crystal P. Jenkins
Utility of C4D Immunohistochemistry in Acute Myocardial Infarction
C Jenkins, D Cardona, S Normann
University of Florida, Gainesville, FL |
| | Lynette M. Sholl
EGFR Gene Amplification Is Invariably Associated with Exon 19 Deletion in Non-Small Cell Lung Carcinoma
LM Sholl, AJ Iafrate, B Yeap, A Holmes, YP Chou, MT Wu, YG Goan, L Su, PA Jänne, DC Christiani, LR Chirieac
Brigham and Women's Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA; Kaohsiung Veteran General Hospital, Kaohsiung, Taiwan; Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA |
| | Ron Yaar
Clinical Significance of Morphometric Measurements of Melanoma Metastatic to Single Sentinel Lymph Nodes
R Yaar, A Page, A Hestley, K Delman, GW Carlson, C Cohen
Emory University, Atlanta, GA |
The recipients of the Stowell-Orbison Certificates of Merit are:
| | Hannah L. Gilmore
Impact of the New American Society of Clinical Oncology/College of American Pathologists Guidelines on the Determination of Breast Cancer HER2 Status
HL Gilmore, LC Collins, JL Connolly, SJ Schnitt
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA |
| | Rohit Mehra
TMPRSS2: ETS Gene Fusions in Androgen Independent Metastatic Prostate Cancers: An Association of TMPRSS2: ERG Fusions through Intronic Deletions and Molecular Evidence of Clonal Expansion
R Mehra, SA Tomlins, L Wang, A Menon, KJ Pienta, AM Chinnaiyan, RB Shah
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI |
| | Juan M. Mosquera
Characterization of TMPRSS2-ERG Fusion High-Grade Prostatic Intraepithelial Neoplasia and Potential Clinical Implications
JM Mosquera, S Perner, EM Genega, M Sanda, MD Hofer, KD Mertz, PL Paris, J Simko, TA Bismar, G Ayala, RB Shah, M Loda, MA Rubin
Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA; Harvard Med School, Boston, MA; Beth Israel Deaconess Med Centrr, Boston, MA; Univ of California, San Francisco, CA; McGill Univ, Montreal, QC, Canada; Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX; Univ of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI |
The ADASP/USCAP Autopsy Award winning abstract was:
| | Karen M. Jones
Sudden Cardiac Death in Non-Cardiac Primary Hematolymphoid Malignancy
KM Jones, EN Pavlikso, LR DiBernardo
Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC |
The ADASP/USCAP Surgical Pathology Award was:
| | Ruta Gupta
Lessons Learnt from Mistakes and Deferrals in Frozen Section Diagnosis of Pulmonary Lesions: An Evidence Based Pathology Approach
R Gupta, AS Khuranna, RJ McKenna, AM Marchevsky
Cedars Sinai Medical Center, LA, CA |
658 registrants attended the Long Course entitled "Tumors of the Kidney and
Urinary Bladder" by Drs. Eble and Grignon, Indiana University. Early
perusals of the critique form show that this course was very well done and very
well liked by the registrants. The syllabus was complete/"long" (280 plus
pages in length) and this Long Course includes a CD packed full of hundreds of
images. This Long Course will be published in the next year in Modern
Pathology.(Last year's Long Course on Targeted Therapy of Cancer: New Roles for
Pathologists" is in the April 08 issue of Modern Pathology).
Sixty half-day Short Courses were presented and very well attended (with a
total registration of Short Courses taken being 4852 (the second highest in
history; last year’s record was 4923) -that is the number of courses
attended times the number of attendees at these sessions; an overall average of
about 81 pathologists/per Short Course offering). From 1999 to the present time,
the Academy has had regularly over 4000 in total registration each year.
Virtually all of our Short Courses have CD's and many have "Virtual Slides".
Two all-day Special Courses were offered: one on "Basic Principles and
Practice of Molecular Pathology in Cancer" headed by Dr. Julia Bridge (Univ.
Nebraska), was "sold out" attracting a maximum
room number of 326 registrants on Monday. This course has a CD in addition to
the extensive syllabus. The ongoing Advanced Molecular Pathology course headed
by Dr. Frederic Barr, Univ. of Pennsylvania on Tuesday attracted 288
registrants and included a CD in addition to the extensive syllabus.
Twenty - Six Companion Societies presented their educational endeavors on
Saturday night and Sunday. The total registrations (number of attendees times
the number of Companion Societies) was 2296, third highest in our history, after
last year’s San Diego meeting (2347) and the record-setting ‘05' San Antonio
meeting of 2371). For the past five years all of the Companion
Societies and evening Specialty Conferences' handouts/syllabus have been placed
on our website. (www.uscap.org) after the Annual meeting. This year
was our third year for the Companions and the Specialties to go "paperless". All
of the Companion Society handouts were on our USCAP Website at least 2-3 weeks
before the meeting, and the Specialty Sessions had their unknowns (i.e.,
Clinical history and unknown slides) up more than one month before the Annual
meeting, with the answers (i.e., text, powerpoints, references, answers, etc) up
the morning after that evening Specialty Conference.
The Nathan Kaufman Timely Topic Lecture was given by Dr. Frank McKeon,
Professor of Cell Biology from Harvard. The title of his lecture was "p63
Through the Ages". His lecture was elegant, timely, and very well received by
the appreciative audience of over 2000 pathologists.
Dr. Chris Fletcher, Brigham & Women’s/Boston gave the Maude Abbot Lecture
entitled: "The Future of Academic Anatomic Pathology: Challenges and
Opportunities". This elegant and wonderful lecture was also attended by over
2200 pathologists. His was truly an outstanding presentation.
The Distinguished Pathologists Award was presented this year to two
individuals in recognition of their long-term, distinguished service in the
development of the discipline of pathology and the USCAP: Drs. Nathan Kaufman
and Bernard Wagner, recognized by the Academy membership for their major and
extensive contributions to pathology over the years. Please see the USCAP
Website (www.uscap.org) for their biosketches.
The President's Award was presented this year to Dr. Jack Perry Strong .
His dedication and work for the Academy and especially as long-standing Chair of
the USCAP Finance Committee is way "above and beyond the call of duty". He
received a very lengthy and vibrant standing-ovation! (And deserved it!). Please
see the USCAP Website of the 2008 Annual Meeting for details about this
outstanding and dedicated individual who have contributed so much to pathology
world-wide.
The F.K. Mostofi Distinguished Service Award went to Dr. Richard Fraser,
Montreal for his important and extraordinary effort and success as President
of the 2006 IAP Centennial Congress held in Montreal.
The Ramzi Cotran Young Investigator Award was presented to Dr. Anirban
Maitra, Johns Hopkins. The recipient of the Castleman Award (for the
best published paper in the field of human pathology ) was Dr. Laurence de
Leval (Belgium) for her paper entitled: "The gene expression profile of
nodal peripheral T-cell lymphoma demonstrates a molecular link between
angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma (AITL) and follicular helper T (Tfh) cells"
in Blood 2007: 109: 4952-4963.
The F. Stephen Vogel Award (for the most outstanding paper published in an
Academy journal by a pathologist-in-training ) went to Dr. Jeremy Wallentine
(Univ. of Utah) for his paper entitled: "Comprehensive identification of
proteins in Hodgkin lymphoma-derived Reed-Sternberg Cells by LM-MS/MS" in
Laboratory Investigation: 2007 Nov; 87(11): 1113-1124, Epub 2007 Sep 17.
The 17 evening Specialty Conferences, which are organ-based, were held
from 7:30-9:30 PM, which was a testimony to the continuing endurance of the
meeting's registrants. All of the evening Specialty Conferences are online on
the Academy's website. For the past five years the unknowns (i.e., clinical
history and representative histologic images) are placed on our USCAP website
several weeks before the annual meeting, and the answers, complete text,
references, etc are placed on our website the next morning after the Specialty
Conference for all throughout the world to enjoy.
Additional activities of the Academy have concentrated on the partnership
of our two academy journals with the most outstanding medical and science
publishing group in the world--Nature Publishing Group. Many of the top
scientific breakthroughs of the 20th Century were first reported in the journal
- Nature (it is the world's foremost weekly scientific journal by impact
factor). Nature Publishing Group (NPG) publishes over 36 high profile
society-owned or affiliated journals and 7-8 of the top 20 in the world in
impact factor. Both of our Academy's journals now offer 2 pages of free color
per published article, rapid advance online publication available 6 weeks after
manuscript acceptance, increased international exposure, electronic table of
content alerts delivered directly to your inbox highlighting new content each
month, online submission of manuscripts and tracking, and reference
cross-linking via CrossRef and MEDLINE. Powered by Naturejobs, the Career
and Recruitment division of the journal Nature, Pathologyjobs provides
recruiters with unique vehicles to advertise. Their Nature website is
outstanding with free abstracts of all articles, integrated searches, online
archives of all full-text articles from 2000 available through a personal or
institutional subscription, and author index-which searches authors names across
all available articles. This is a very powerful force in research and education
for our members to utilize. In addition, the scientific abstracts for the past
three years are now online and searchable. (Please see our USCAP and the Nature
websites).
Other educational endeavors by the USCAP this past year include:
- The IAP Centennial Congress held in Montreal September 16-21, 2006. 2700 attendees (a record for the IAP Congresses) with individuals from almost 100 countries (also a record). A record number of scientific abstracts were submitted (from over 85 countries).
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- The establishment of the eAcademy (Go to: www.USCAPeAcademy.org for further information). This online, distance-learning tool, will render CME credit for a minor charge. This is under the Direction of Dr. John Sinard (Yale). The APECS cases (anatomic pathology cases) will start this summer, 2008.
- The First American Board of Pathology-approved "Self Assessment Module" (SAM): Diagnostic Cytopathology 07. We now have multiple SAM offerings: see the left-hand side of our USCAP Website for a listing of our "four sets" of SAM offerings. .
- The development of the CME Portfolio for members.
- Continuing involvement in altruistic activities, including West and Sub-Saharan Africa.
- Continuing growth of the free USCAP "Knowledge Hub/Pathology Portal"
- Over 500 Virtual Slides are now up on the USCAP Website for free (e.g., IAP Centennial; Annual evening Specialty Conferences)
- The "Naturization"of Laboratory Investigation (watch for future developments of this type for Modern Pathology coming very soon!)
- The development of the Itinerary Planner (electronic planner) for the Annual Meeting
- Online Membership Renewal and Registration
- A Poster Creation Service and ability to demonstrate entire abstract online
- Pod casts of the IAP Centennial KeyNote Addresses, and 2007 and 2008 Annual addresses.
- Online Evaluation of all of the Academy’s Courses
- And much more.
By action of Council, the USCAP instituted a Strategic Planning Initiative
in 2003-2004 to look at the future of pathology and The Academy. Summer
retreats (actually advances) directed by Dr. Jeffrey Myers have
continued, and implementation of these educational goals and strategies have
been implemented.
For the last four years, the Academy rolled out a number of new initiatives
for our Junior members including: Several programs for
pathologists-in-training were instituted-- including the Fellowship Fair with
40-55 institutions to discuss hundreds of fellowships; the new evening Specialty
Conference just for house staff/fellows; and the House Staff Hospitality Room
where Academy and Pathology leaders from throughout North America were present
to talk with the house staff.
The USCAP's annual summer pathology review course and update- Diagnostic
Pathology, with its fourteen outstanding faculty will be held in Hawaii in
July. It is Directed by Drs. Greg Fuller (MD Anderson) and Stuart Schnitt (BID,
Boston). (See www.uscap.org for complete
schedule). Last year’s course (07) came with a 1100 page handout and a 3800
image CD-ROM!
This was the third year for the USCAP Winter (January) Course entitled
"Diagnostic Cytopathology" under the initiation, leadership and direction of Dr.
Celeste Powers (Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond). This 2 l/2 day
weekend intense and advanced course was held at the Carefree Resort north of
Scottsdale/Phoenix, Arizona. The 700 plus page handout and the extensive CD
(with over a thousand images) were very well received. There were 70 individuals
in attendance. We will be doing another winter Diagnostic Cytopathology course
next year in January 2009 to be held in Tampa, Florida
The educational initiative of the USCAP is Practical Pathology Seminars, in
its second year, under the direction of Dr. John Goldblum (Cleveland Clinic)
. It will be held from April 25-27, 2008 in Clearwater Beach (Tampa), Florida.
Five short courses will be given on topics including: Gyn, Breast, GU, Molecular
Surgical Pathology and Soft Tissue Tumors by eight outstanding faculty.
Next year's annual USCAP meeting will be held in Boston, Massachusetts from
March 7-13, 2009. The Long Course entitled "Breast Pathology" will be
directed by Stuart Schnitt and Frances O’Malley. As usual there will be an
extensive handout/syllabus and a CD with a great many images.
There are several additions to our USCAP Committees: Four new members of
the Education Committee (under the Direction of Dr. John Goldblum) are: Drs.
Celina Kleer (Univ. Michigan), Robert Hasserjian (MGH/Boston); Tarik Tihan
(UCSF), and Qihui (Jimmy) Zhai (Methodist/Houston).
Dr. Stu Schnitt, BID/Boston, is by vote of the membership the new
Vice-President of the Academy, and Dr. Richard Zarbo (Henry Ford, Detroit) is
President-Elect. The newly elected (by the Academy membership) Council members
are: Frances O’Malley (Toronto), Mary Richardson (Charleston), and Allen Gown
(Seattle)
Dr. Jack Strong (LSU) steps down as the head of the Finance Committee, which
will now be headed by Dr. Peter Banks and our newest member is Dr. John Eble.
The Publications Committee previously chaired by Dr. Allen Gown will now be
chaired by Dr. Ronald DeLellis with Dr. Bruce Smoller as our newest member. The
newest members of the Young Investigator Committee are Drs. Allen Gown, Frances
O’Malley, and Tony Yachnis. New Members of the Castleman Award Committee
include: Drs. Max Loda, Jeffrey Saffitz and Judith Ferry. New members of the
Vogel Award Committee are Drs. Adam Bagg and Volkan Adsay. Dr. Jennifer Hunt
will join Dr. Bill Gardner as a member of the Pathology Section Council at the
AMA House of Delegates. All of the members of the various USCAP Committees are
noted on our website (www.uscap.org).
The new at-large member of the Nominating Committee (under the Direction of
Dr. Chris Crum) is Dr. Cheryl Coffin. If you have nominations for Council (or
any available committee position) please let the central Augusta office know
(fsilva@uscap.org).
Please check the USCAP Website (www.uscap.org) for an immense number of educational
materials which are free. Over five year's worth of evening Specialty
Conferences and Companion Society's materials are up as well over three dozen of
excellent, ended Short Courses and available to anyone who wishes to utilize
them. In addition, as noted before, three successive years of our scientific
abstracts are now online and searchable, and can be downloaded, as well as many
Short Courses. That's over 5000 searchable cutting-edge scientific abstracts! We
also have a Table of Contents by 24 plus organ systems/subspecialties of our
nineteen hundred entries/modules for all to have for free. Our USCAP Website
continues to have record-setting hits with over 5.0 million hits in January 2007
from 22,000 individual pathologists from throughout the world (85 countries)
with over 600,000 total page views that month. The USCAP is happy to provide
this free altruistic service for pathologists throughout the world. Go to: www.uscap.org
for the largest eBook in the history of anatomic and diagnostic molecular
pathology, for free
At present the USCAP membership is in excess of 10,600 pathologists (from 77
countries in addition to the US and Canada); over 2300 of those are Junior
Members. We continue to grow and be vibrant. It is clear that our colleagues in
pathology are a very dedicated and professional lot. We are proud to be
associated with them.
Thanks for all your support for all those we serve--our patients, our
physicians and our students.
Hope to see you in Tampa, Hawaii, and Boston.
Fred Silva, Secretary-Treasurer and Executive Vice President, USCAP
March 11, 2008
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