Dr. Frank J. Veith Provides an Overview About the Upcoming 2012 VEITHsymposium

Q: What are the dates for this year’s VEITHsymposium?

A: It begins on Wednesday, November 14 and ends Sunday, November 18.

Q: What makes the symposium different from others?

A: Each year, it gets more complete and comprehensive. This symposium really provides an almost total overview of everything that’s new, different, and exciting in vascular disease management, certainly in vascular surgery and intervention. We tend to highlight all aspects of controversial issues and try to find things that are really new and different. It’s not a rehash of old material but rather an update that’s current as of the day it is presented.

There is simply no comparison about the completeness of our conference. We feature short discussions that encompass a wide variety of material. From an educational view, we offer the most well rounded program to vascular specialists.

Q: Are there controversial subjects that you know will be presented this year?

A: Every issue that can be deemed in any way controversial is pretty fully aired at our meeting. That’s one of the things that make it unique and attractive. You can’t read these things anywhere. As part of my job, I pick up on what is in dispute or controversial and bring it to the attention of the viewers or attendees in ways for which there is really no substitute.

Q: What surprises are in store for the attendees this year?

A: It’ll be even better, more comprehensive, and more complete this year. There will be many areas that are of interest to people such as the multiple sclerosis controversy or treating venous obstructions in the neck or elsewhere as a remedial cause of MS. We covered this topic last year and this year we’re doing it more intensely. That’s one hot area.

The whole lower extremity area and endovascular treatment for lower extremity disease, particularly below the knee, is another exciting area. There are those who do not believe in it and those who do, of whom I am one. Most of the new developments are coming from Europe where they have access to dramatically improved technology. A lot of that will be featured throughout the meeting, particularly on Thursday morning.

Venous disease is another important point of discussion because we’re learning how endovascular technology can allow treatment of otherwise untreatable or very difficult to treat entities. It’s an area that hasn’t been fully harvested or made available for vascular specialists, which we are now expanding. We’re also airing controversies. Do these endovascular treatments really work? Are they necessary? When are they necessary? What new horizons are there for vascular specialists to expand?

There is an abundance of hot topics and controversies related to carotid disease including the carotid stenting controversy, whether asymptomatic carotid stenosis patients should be treated or not. We also cover parallel grafts, chimneys, periscopes, or sandwich grafts, for facilitating endovascular treatment of complex aneurysms, which involves branches. This is extremely controversial, as some people do not believe that they work and others do, but we’ll present all of the new data.

Then there’s also the controversial topic of multi-layer stents, which are unbelievably effective stents with pores and you cover the branches, preserving the flow and excluding the aneurysm. People are quite militant on both sides of this but hopefully we will have data that will shed a lot of light on these types of stents and whether or not they actually work.

There are just so many areas of interest this year and plenty of controversial data to be presented. These are the kinds of topics that keep our program interesting and unique.

Q: When will the official program be available?

A: It is available right now online but it is very fluid. I’m always receiving new ideas and it will adjust due to adding or losing different speakers for a variety of reasons. We do have some open spots on the program but we are trying to fill those now. We will continue to modify right up until the meeting begins but the preliminary program can be viewed right now at https://www.veithsymposium.org.

Q: Have you noticed that the number of attendees increases every year?

A: So far, we have been very fortunate and our numbers continue to increase every year. We would also like for them to increase a lot more. There are probably 18,000-20,000 vascular specialists in the world and we hope to get most of them to attend or have access to this meeting because we provide the most well rounded educational program with something for everyone. We feature open surgery, endovascular, medical treatment and non-interventional treatment, and we try to present a balanced view of all sides relating to a given topic. That’s what makes our conference unique. Even if some specialists cannot attend, they can access everything directly online.

Q: What will you personally present this year?

A: I usually try not to give talks at the meeting because my job is really to make sure everything runs smoothly at the symposium. I usually have my coauthors present information if I am working on a particular research project, but this year, I will speak about why randomized controlled trials can be misleading. I am going to give an overview of that topic in a 5-minute presentation, which will be quite a challenge as that topic usually takes me 20-25 minutes to discuss fully with examples.

Q: Given all of the various topics that you cover, how do you make sure the symposium runs smoothly and that everyone has the ability to access the information they may have missed during a separate session?

A: In order to get all of the information presented during our symposium, we have concurrent sessions. There are times when someone may want to be in two places at once to get the most out of their time, which can be frustrating. For this reason, we’ve created a unique system that allows one to watch a talk as if they were there. We capture everything and within a week, everyone can access the presentation online, watch the presenter actually give the lecture, view the slides, and feel like they were able to see it as if they were there. It’s a really remarkable system and we are going to use it again this year. You can gain access to this system and the entire conference for a nominal fee and last year’s conference is also available online right now.

Q: Will any of the presenters revisit topics from last year? What recent updates can we expect?

A: Yes, some of the topics may be revisited but with new information. We won’t repeat information from last year but will feature new results that became available since last year. The results froms the INSTEAD trial are a perfect example. At 2 years, the results showed one thing and at 5 years, they show something completely different so obviously, we’re going to feature that new result, which to my knowledge, has not been published yet.

Q: Are there any weaknesses associated with the VEITHsymposium?

A: No matter how interested and devoted you are to this educational experience, you can’t possibly absorb everything in one sitting and unfortunately, there will be talks that you miss. Information overload is our one downfall, but that’s why we give our attendees the opportunity to view the lectures online after the conference.

Another problem we confronted was that some of our international attendees did not speak fluent English. We took steps to assist these attendees with a translation process so that they could access the medical information in their own languages. This year, we have translations available in Portuguese, Spanish, Chinese, and Russian.

Q: Is there anything else that you would like to add?

A: To give the most enjoyable experience, we give our attendees easy access to exhibits and lectures in a pleasant setting. Rather than having to walk across a huge conference center to get to the next lecture or visit the exhibit hall, we have everything available near to one another. Being in New York during such a beautiful time of the year also gives the family members of our attendees the opportunity to enjoy the experience with access to the theater, restaurants, and beautiful holiday décor throughout the city.

I would also like to mention our affiliated meeting, which is the associated interventional radiology meeting (AIM). AIM begins on the Tuesday before the VEITHsymposium. Anyone who comes to our meeting also has access to that meeting and you can find more information about it at www.aimsymposium.org.

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Dr. Frank J. Veith was the first U.S. surgeon to perform an endovascular aneurysm repair and was a major pioneer of aggressive limb salvage surgery. Dr. Veith graduated from Cornell University Medical School with honors before completing an internship at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in New York and residency training at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Throughout his career, Dr. Veith held positions as Chief of Vascular Surgery and Chairman of Surgery at Montefiore Medical Center and Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He has held the William J. Von Liebig Chair in Vascular Surgery and has been the Vice Chairman of the Department of Surgery.