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Sweet Success in
San Francisco
74th Annual Meeting Initiates
AANS’ Diamond Jubilee Year
BY MANDA J.SEAVER
When the 74th AANS Annual
Meeting officially opened on
Monday, April 24, Annual Meeting
Chair James T. Rutka, MD,
announced the expectation that
the event would be “the most
successful annual meeting in the
history of the AANS.”
The final numbers bear out Dr. Rutka’s optimism.
With medical attendees totaling 3,172, the San Francisco
meeting proved to be the most successful ever
by this measure, and the grand total of 6,887 attendees
puts the meeting in contention for top honors
with the year 2000 meeting. The meeting’s success
sets the bar high in keeping with great expectations
for the AANS 75th anniversary, a celebration that
began with the 2006 meeting, continues throughout
the year, and culminates in the 75th Annual Meeting:
Celebrating AANS’ Diamond Jubilee, to be held in
Washington, D.C., April 14–19, 2007.
Of course, stellar attendance is but one indicator
of success. This meeting’s singular mix of science,
social events, and the city’s hospitality coalesced in a
particularly memorable occasion.
The meeting owes its success in large part to Dr. Rutka and to
the entire planning team, including Mitchel S. Berger, MD, scientific
program chair, and Timothy B. Mapstone, MD, scientific
posters chair; Russell J. Andrews, MD, Nicholas M. Barbaro, MD,
Sue Ellen Barbaro, Deborah L. Benzil, MD, Lawrence S. Chin, MD,
E. Sander Connolly Jr., MD, Anthony L. D’Ambrosio, MD, Joseph
A. Hlavin, PA-C, David F. Jimenez, MD, Eric A. Potts, MD, Andrea
Strayer, CNRN, Vincent C. Traynelis, MD, and Eve C. Tsai, MD.
This meeting’s 38 practical clinics, 19 general scientific sessions,
77 breakfast seminars, 135 oral abstract presentations, more
than 500 poster presentations, and 234 companies exhibiting the
latest neurosurgical technology and products were introduced to
a broader audience through media outreach. The AANS not only
promoted the meeting and the association itself, it also employed
a peer-review process to select scientific topics from all accepted
annual meeting oral abstracts for release to the media.
This year’s 13 annual meeting scientific press releases reflected
a wide range of neurosurgical topics, covering, for example, spinal
fusion and artificial discs, the use of cortical language mapping
before glioma surgery, skull protection offered to children by bicycle
helmets, and deep brain stimulation. The scientific releases as
well as the public interest releases associated with Neurosurgery
Awareness Week, held concurrently with the AANS Annual Meeting,
generated considerable media attention, with print and
broadcast media reaching an estimated worldwide audience of 636
million and counting. Notable online publications covering the
meeting included Yahoo!News, USA Today, Reuters, HealthScout,
HealthDay, HealthCentral, Excite and Forbes. Major newspapers
and magazines included The Wall Street Journal, The Cleveland
Plain Dealer, Star Tribune, Indianapolis Star, and Business Week.
16 Vol. 15, No. 2 • 2006 • AANS Bulletin