2011 World Congress review and photographs!
Scientific program
We are delighted to report on the huge success of the 21st World Congress held in Los Angeles last week. Over 1200 delegates, 100 invited faculty and representatives from over 30 exhibiting companies came together at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza hotel in Beverly Hills for 6 days of intense, innovative and exciting scientific program content.
The event began with our Pre-congress courses, held on Saturday 17 and Sunday 18 September. These courses offer an advanced teaching level, covering themes within the main scientific program in greater detail. Topics included Fetal echocardiopgraphy, Fetal neurosonography and CNS anomalies, Doppler and Pelvic floor ultrasound. These courses were attended by over 500 delegates in total.
The main Congress program began after lunch on Sunday, with a welcome from Congress Chairman, Dr Lawrence Platt. This was followed by our opening ceremony and ‘Top 6 Abstracts’ session, featuring presentations of the top six highest ranked submitted abstracts, as well as the Stuart Campbell lecture from Professor Peter Dietz of Australia on ‘The impact of levator trauma’. Opening highlights continued through the afternoon and the program concluded with the Gold Medal award to Professor Hugh Robinson and a special lecture on ‘Assisted reproduction techniques’ from Professor Alan DeCherney.
The main Congress scientific program began on Monday morning with a series of ‘Meet the professor sessions’, a series of smaller specialty sessions, each focused around the work, research and techniques of an invited expert faculty member. These were held each morning, Monday to Thursday with additional afternoon sessions on some days.
Following these early morning sessions, the opening plenary each day was a ‘State of the Art’ lecture, and we were pleased to welcome word-renowned experts such as Jamil Aboulhoson, Lisa Schaffer, Michael Phelps and Dirk Timmerman, speaking on topics ranging from congenital heart disease, microarrays and molecular imaging to ovarian cancer.
Following these daily plenaries, the program split into 3 sessions with two obstetrics streams, and one gynecology stream running in parallel. Live scans formed the starting point to many of these sessions with invited talks from expert faculty providing the context for a series of abstracts selected for oral presentation.
The program then moved into short oral presentation (OP) sessions, which were quick-fire oral poster sessions, featuring up to six concurrent streams of 3 minute descriptions and discussion of posters considered appropriate for presentation.
Between Monday and Thursday the scientific program moved back and forth between the three plenary streams and the OP sessions during the day and each day closed with our extremely popular focused workshops sessions. These are smaller, more interactive sessions, consisting entirely of specially invited talks and discussion-based group interaction.
The final session on Thursday lunchtime featured a special closing plenary, entitled ‘A mock trial: wrongful birth’. In this, two panels of ‘expert witnesses’ were cross examined by two lawyers with a record of involvement in medical lawsuits, and case in question featured a real-life trial involving the administration of Methotrexate to treat a potential ectopic pregnancy and its subsequent effect on twin fetuses born after the treatment. This session was very well attended and provided an extremely interesting insight into the workings of a medical lawsuit, as well as provoking lively discussion and amongst attendees, who were split over their verdict in the trial, and also shocked at the real-life outcome!
A mock trial: cross examination A mock trial: summing up
During the Congress, the commercial exhibition was open throughout and proved a very popular aspect of the meeting. We would like to extend our thanks to all our exhibitors and sponsors for their ongoing involvement with the meeting and to those companies who provide continuing scientific support with the provision of equipment for our live scan demonstrations.
The ISUOG lounge was also open in the exhibition hall during the Congress, providing assistance regarding membership as well as advice and information on how to use the Congress web portal, ISUOG OnDemand.
ISUOG lounge, California Showroom
Exhibition snapshots
Social program
Following the opening sessions and welcome on Sunday, the first day of the Congress was brought to a fantastic close by a performance from the UCLA Scattertones; an acappella singing group who gave an extremely energetic performance of hits, using their voices to melodies, rhythm and percussion.
Following the Scattertones, Lior Kaminetsky, a celebrated Israeli violinist, on tour in America, gave a special customised performance for ISUOG, combining classical tunes with some more well-known movie themes.
The Scattertones Welcome reception
The second main highlight of the Congress social program was the eagerly-anticipated Congress party, help on Tuesday night at Paramount Studios. Tickets where in high demand and the event was sold-out shortly after the Congress opened. We held an exclusive evening of Hollywood glamour, including studio tours, buffet dinner and dancing in front of the iconic Paramount gates and Hollywood sign, plus a private movie screening of Saturday Night Fever in the studio preview theatre! Surprise guests included Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe who welcomed guests on the red carpet as they arrived at the event!
Studio gates and fountain Frank and Marilyn!
The Congress closed on Thursday afternoon with our ‘Welcome to Copenhagen’ lunch of Danish Smørrebrød open sandwiches and Carlsberg beers. We look forward to seeing you in Denmark in 2012!!
