By Anita Painter and Drs. Allan Brown and Theodore Sanford
Our 1999 Practical Updates in Anesthesiology was a huge success! Not including our own faculty, we hosted 97 guests and had one of the most consistently well prepared and delivered group of lectures ever. Among the meeting registrants were ten former residents from the University of Michigan, several of whom were classmates using the meeting as a sort of alumni gathering. It was wonderful to greet friends from meetings gone by and to meet intriguing first-time guests.
It was also our pleasure to host guest speaker Dr. Michael Roizen, from the University of Chicago, who provided a perfect lead-off hitter for the conference with his talk entitled “Real Age: Are You As Young as You Can Be?” The quality of the conference never wavered right up to our last program, “Tricks of the Trade.” This was a very well received audience participation session in which all meeting attendees were encouraged to share some tricks used in their daily anesthesia practice. What began as a session in which people were shy and afraid to get up in front of a group of 100 of their closest friends, soon turned into a sharing session that unfortunately ran out of time before everyone could speak. It looks like this is one session that will be repeated next year.
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Theodore J. Sanford, MD welcoming guests. |
Also as part of this year’s course, we presented a Difficult Airway Workshop, coordinated by Dr. Allan Brown, Director of the Difficult Airway Clinic. The workshop was a huge success, in part due to an old friend, Bill Herpich and the Olympus Company, who provided us with all of the necessary scopes and models, and Katie Flynn, who produced a very nice handout together with the organization papers for the various workshop rotations. Seeing the fruition of this logistically difficult project was due in large part to the faculty of Drs. Allan Brown, Jeremy Lieberman, Adriane Concus, John Huntington, Norah Naughton, Jeffrey Rosenthal, and Mary Mathai. They staffed four workshop stations for two hours each day: “Adult Fiberoptic Endoscopy Technique,” “Pediatric Fiberoptic Endoscopic Technique,” “C-arm Fluoroscopic Visualization of the Airway,” and “The Surgical Airway.” The workshop was enlivened by the delivery each day of two fresh pig heads from the local butcher.
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Dr. Klarr after the lectures |
Because the lectures ended by noon, there was ample occasion to enjoy Puerto Vallarta and surrounding terrain. Tours to the rain forest, historic district, deep-sea fishing and whale watching were popular choices, as well as browsing the markets and shops of picturesque Puerto Vallarta. Of course, every day was perfect for relaxing on the beach and soaking up the sun. The weather cooperated, as we did not see a cloud each day and the temperature hovered in the low 80s. We could not but think briefly of our friends and colleagues left behind in the less inviting climes of North America.
Twilight brought no end to exploration of the beach side town. Our list of outstanding area restaurants lengthened quite a bit this year. Several guests proved to be robust night owls who boogied into the early morning. It was interesting to note that aside from being accomplished anesthesiologists, two guests displayed a hidden talent for karaoke artistry.
Special thanks are due to the accommodating hotel staff of the Fiesta Americana, and to Ernesto Mejia of the Towsley Center for Continuing Medical Education, who negotiated with Mexican customs and met the logistics of our large undertaking, contributing to the success of our meeting.