Resad Pasic, MD, PhD, MSPH
Scientific Program Chair
37th Global Congress of Minimally Invasive Gynecology
AAGL Advancing Minimally Invasive Gynecology Worldwide
University of Louisville School of Medicine
Louisville, KY

Hello, My name is Dr Resad Pasic, I’m associate professor of ob-gyn at the University of Louisville in Louisville KY. I’m also codirector of a fellowship in minimally invasive gynecologic endoscopy. And I’m also director of a division of minimally invasive gynecology at the University of Louisville. This year I’m vice president of the AAGL. As such, I am serving as a scientific program chair for our 37^th annual meting that is currently taking place at the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas.

To tell you a little more about the meeting, AAGL has a long tradition of organizing meetings in minimally invasive gynecologic surgery. This year, we have about 2500 participants that are coming from 63 different countries and this meeting has many, many different advantages for our participants. Primarily it has great educational value and also it has great networking value for the participants of this meeting.

When we’re talking about educational value, we this year are having 18 postgraduate courses on different topics in gynecologic surgery. Out of those we have about 6 hands-on courses. We are offering courses in laparoscopic surgery, suturing, we are offering courses in hysteroscopy and endometrial ablation techniques. And we are also using hands on courses using female cadavers where we teach physicians how to do pelvic sidewall dissections. Also this year we are offering a course for ob-gyn oncologists on female cadavers. And we have one course for urogynecologists on how to treat pelvic floor disorders and urinary stress incontinence. That’s also being taught on female cadavers.

Besides these postgraduate courses that are taking place on the first 2 days of the meetings, we will also have debates that deal with important clinical issues, like using mesh in pelvic floor reconstruction surgery; also debates on treatment of fibroids and so on.

We also have many surgical tutorials where we have the world’s best experts in minimally invasive surgery presenting the surgical techniques, how to deal with certain topics and that goes from resection of endometriosis to hysterectomies to pelvic sidewall dissections and so on.

We will also have 2 live telesurgery sessions, where we have world experts performing different laparoscopic surgeries at their own centers. These surgeries will be telecast directly to the meeting, so we will have surgeries performed in different places in the US and also around the year. This year we will have surgeons form India performing a total or radical laparoscopic hysterectomy that is done for cancer. It will be broadcast directly to the meeting.

We will have cases of robotic surgery transmitted from New York directly to the meeting. Also cases form Texas, as well as Florida, and Pittsburgh. So our participants will be able to see all these surgeries to see how they are performed in their natural settings.

So I am sure this meeting will offer a lot to the participants. There is a great value. First of all we will have physicians coming from all these different parts of the world. I myself first went to the AALG meeting in 1992, I was totally captured and fascinated by the energy of this meeting and I decided to come back. Every year since then, I’ve gone back to the AAGL meetings. Our founder, the late Jordan Phillips, who passed away this year, he always used to say that the AALG is like a family. In this meeting and over the course of the years, I’ve met many surgeons that have become my close personal friends, and every time to me it looks like a family reunion when I go to these meetings.

So there is great value of meeting these highly distinguished surgeons who come from different parts of the world, listening to their lectures, being invited to their places to give lectures, and so on.

The attendance is always bigger in Vegas than in other places. The number that I am quoting is including industry, so we have about 1500 physicians and about 1000 industry personnel. We will have the largest exhibit so far at these meetings because we are blessed that industry is actually following all of these trends in development of minimally invasive surgical technology so they always attend our meetings in large numbers.

Definitely for someone who is coming to the meeting for the first time, they will have a great variety of things to attend. They will have the possibility to go to different lectures, tutorials, and debates. We have great video sessions where surgeons show their own videos.

And always the exhibit area is a highlight of the meeting so that attendees can visit different booths and talk to the industry representatives so they can see what kind of new instruments are there, what kind of treatment options are out there. Usually at the exhibit booths, industry has their own speakers where they talk about different topics and they present certain instruments and so on. I think we’re living in an age where we are witnessing great improvements in technologies and these technologic improvements can be applied in the field of medicine so that we are able to treat our patients in minimally invasive ways.

It is important for all the physicians to realize that there are these minimally invasive treatment options for patients. But at the same time it is important for patients also to realize that these things exist. They can look for them on the Internet with their own communities with physicians so they can demand these treatment options.

We are witnessing every day the development of new techniques as well as new instrumentation that will enable us to treat these patients in minimally invasive ways so that their recovery will be much quicker as well as treatment options will be better.

I’ve been practicing minimally invasive surgery for about 20 years and believe me every time I time I go to any of the meetings, I always learn something new. I’m personally looking for many different things; among others will be some of the debates and surgical tutorials as well these live surgery sessions. It’s very hard to pick up one single thing that’s of particular interest.

This year we are going to have a great general session that will talk about the history of film and how it was applied to medicine as well as future of film, where it is taking us and new technological developments that we witness in the medical field. so I think that session will be very interesting.