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IDSA 48th Annual Meeting recap
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The IDSA 48th Annual Meeting is now history, and to me it was a great success. Without any doubt, the venue was an important component of its success.
Vancouver is a beautiful city, with many attractions to lure people away from the meetings, or to arrive a day or two early and stay a day or two after the meetings. One of the highlights was the relighting of the Olympic torch, which was lit for 24 hours, not for IDSA, but to rename the surrounding plaza for a gentleman who was instrumental in bringing the Winter Olympic Games to Vancouver earlier this year, but died before the games were over. All was immediately adjacent to the convention center.
The society has held two meetings in the last decade in Canadian venues — Toronto and Vancouver. Both were a huge success, in part because both were in cosmopolitan cities and the locals were both friendly and very hospitable. I hope the Society plans to return its Annual Meeting to Canada on a regular basis.
The program committee hit all the important issues in infectious disease. The Tony Fauci plenary session has become a regular opener, and with good reason. This year’s theme was a summary of what the federal government plans to do to assure readiness in the face of impending infectious disease disaster or bioterrorism. This was in response to a question from President Obama to Fauci in response to the lack of availability of pandemic H1N1 vaccine during September 2009.
To my aging eyes, there is a certain kind of “sameness” to these meetings, and that’s certainly true if one looks simply at the various formats used, including interactive, state-of-the-art sessions — some controversial, as well as oral and poster sessions. That is a relatively superficial issue, however, and a good feel of the meeting can be had only by examining the topics and issues discussed.
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, C. difficile, multidrug resistant organisms, new beta-lactamases and carbapenemases, controversies in infection control and infectious disease more generally, vaccinology, advances in HIV/AIDS and pandemic H1N1 influenza were all well represented on the program. As was true at the 5th Decennial Conference on Nosocomial Infections, held earlier this year, the “search-and-destroy” approach to dealing with MRSA is increasingly regarded as an idea whose time has passed. Measures aimed at controlling a variety of multi-resistant pathogens rather than just one are increasingly in favor.
If anything, the program committee may have gone slightly overboard with H1N1 influenza. Every conceivable aspect of this pandemic was dealt with in detail, including virology, viral pathogenesis, clinical aspects, ICU issues, epidemiology and vaccination. A session on mandating influenza vaccine for health care workers turned out to be a bit of a dud — except for an excellent presentation of the results achieved in HCA hospitals by Edward Septimus, MD. There were one too many lawyers and a Service Workers International Union representative who could not articulate their positions very effectively.
The number of registrants at the meeting exceeded 4,700, according to IDSA president Richard Whitely, MD — a record attendance. This is somewhat surprising for a West Coast meeting, suggesting that the 2011 meeting in Boston could draw an even larger number of registrants.