31st Annual Meeting & Scientific Sessions
◊ San Diego ◊

Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Volume 7, Issue 1
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Welcome From the President

      Welcome to this 31st Annual Meeting of the Society. Assuming no natural disasters this year, and if you are reading this we have not had the Great San Diego Earthquake, it will be the biggest and best ever. Program Chair Robin Pierson and his colleagues have assembled the most comprehensive and exciting range of attractions, with an abundance for every aspect of our membership's interests.
      Today's start, with its huge range of Satellite sessions, sets the style for the rest of the week. This is a non-stop, something-for-everyone meeting. And we have a wonderful setting, sunlight everywhere and the backdrop of the Harbour. Not only will our minds be stimulated, but those from the Northern States, we Europeans, indeed members from all around the world, will be reinvigorated by the California sunshine.
      In addition to the science, and meeting with old friends, this is an opportunity to take part in your Society. Go to the Council meetings, the drivers of the Society into the future. Come to the Opening Plenary, and the Business meeting on Friday, to learn of new developments and initiatives.
      Finally, and perhaps most importantly, enjoy the social gatherings. I welcome you to make new friends and cement old alliances, starting with the Opening Reception tonight and throughout the Meeting to the Gala on Friday.

John Dark
ISHLT President, 2010-11

A Message from the Program Chair

      Welcome to the 31st Annual ISHLT meeting and San Diego's Bayfront Hilton. With the highest ever number of abstract submissions and registration running at record levels, this ISHLT meeting promises to be the biggest and best to date.
      This is truly YOUR meeting. The Scientific Programs' educational offerings were designed largely by you, starting with the Pre-Meeting Symposia and continuing with Sunrise Symposia, Mid-Day Symposia, and ever-popular debates. The concurrent scientific sessions are comprised entirely of your work—those abstracts judged particularly meritorious by a jury of your peers. The Plenary Sessions feature invited lectures by several of our Society's leaders, pioneers and innovators in the several disciplines spanned by our diverse membership. We apologize for the necessity of multiple overlapping concurrent sessions, which we know will mean that you'd like to be in more than one place much of the time: only by doing so can the diverse educational needs of our members be satisfied. On behalf of the 2011 Program Committee and the ISHLT Board, THANK YOU for your active participation in putting together this year's Program.
      We hope you will also enjoy the social program, including the President's Gala Reception on Friday evening. As always, you can expect to find plenty of food, drink, music, and friends in the hotel ballroom as well as the lovely adjacent outdoor terrace. We expect everyone to put on their dancing shoes, and to enjoy the ambience, camaraderie, and fun! Several industry-sponsored evening satellite programs, while not part of the meeting's official scientific program, will include interesting and potentially transformative communications that also deserve your attention.
      On behalf of the ISHLT Board, I extend my personal heart-felt thanks the ISHLT membership for their guidance and inspiration in putting together the meeting's featured educational offerings. I wish to particularly recognize the abstract reviewers and Program Committee members who donated their precious time and unique expertise to help us fashion coherent, high-quality concurrent sessions and cutting-edge Symposia. We hope you will find this year's Program professionally enriching, and entertaining! Welcome to San Diego!!

Richard N. Pierson III, MD
Scientific Program Chair
ISHLT 31st Annual Meeting and Scientific Sessions

This issue of the conference coverage newsletter was supported by a grant from:

A Special Focus on CMV in This Year's Meeting

Wednesday morning will tackle one of the most challenging management issues in the postthoracic transplantation patient: CMV infection. It is one of the most common, and may be the single most important, viral infection in thoracic transplantation. The Pre-Meeting Symposium 10: CMV—The Gathering Storm, will cover topics ranging from prevention strategies to addressing the challenge of treating ganciclovir-resistant CMV. The symposium will also discuss treatment options for this issue in the pediatric population in the talk, "Pediatric Issues in CMV Management—The Hinge of Fate," by Dr. Lara Danziger-Isakov. It will conclude with diagnostic struggles and successes.

Experts Look for a Consensus in Pediatric Transplantation

This Year's meeting will again put the spotlight on pediatric transplantation in today's Pre-Meeting Symposium 21: Pediatric Cardiothoracic Transplant: Do We Have Consensus? Talks will start with addressing who is an appropriate candidate for transplantation. Dr. Robert G. Weintraub will tackle the hearts, while Dr. Albert Faro will discuss the lungs. The symposium will then continue with, "Who is a good Donor," for heart and lung transplantation. It will conclude with a look at post-transplant management. This symposium should prove to be a "must see" for the pediatric transplant community.

AMR3—The Role of Pathology in Diagnosis of Antibody Mediated Rejection in the Heart

Today's AMR symposium will focus on the important role of pathology in diagnosis of AMR in cardiac allografts. It will highlight technical as well as interpretative issues and discuss benefits and options of an early recognition of AMR to optimize medical treatment and clinical outcome.

Over recent years, acute antibody mediated rejection (AMR) has been identified as a clinically important cause of acute and chronic cardiac allograft dysfunction. In most cases, it is associated with diminished allograft survival and accelerated development of transplantassociated vasculopathy. In many clinical studies, the incidence, risk factors, serological, clinical and pathological features have been evaluated. The diagnostic criteria required to identify AMR remains an important unsettled question in the field. The clinical diagnosis of AMR usually includes the clinical findings of hemodynamic dysfunction. Histologic AMR may include the presence of circulating antibodies that react with donor transplantation antigens along with typical histopathological and immunopathological findings, such as endothelial cell swelling, accumulation of intravascular macrophages or neutrophils, and immunoglobulin and complement deposition in capillaries.

AMR3 has been recognized as a severe pathological AMR, showing advanced histopathological findings of interstitial hemorrhage, capillary fragmentation, mixed inflammatory infiltrates, endothelial cell pyknosis and/or karyorrhexis and marked edema. Cases of graft expressing AMR3 are usually associated with profound hemodynamic dysfunction and poor clinical outcomes.

In the AMR symposium today, world experts will discuss current state of the art in pathologic AMR diagnosis, and discuss remaining questions and controversies.