The Annual Scientific meeting of the Difficult Airway Society (DAS 2014) was hosted by the Department of Anaesthesia, University of Coventry, at the Holiday Inn, at Stratford upon Avon from the 12-14th November 2014.
The meeting has been a resounding success!
It broke all records in terms of the number of delegates who attended the meeting in the last 19 years. A record 462 delegates registered for the three day conference. The venue was full to the last seat on the 13th and 14th, and the scientific program was rated highly by the delegates.
It also boasted 31 trade exhibitions, 10 more than in the previous Year!
The 12th Nov was the workshop day with four parallel workshops held at two separate venues.
Holiday inn was the venue for Traditional workshops and had a record 98 delegates, 54 faculty.
The Human Cadaveric Workshop at the West Midland Surgical Training centre at UHCW was limited to 22 delegates and the team was led by Prof Levitan from the U.S.
The Human simulation and Paediatric Workshops were held at the CSB each with 20 and 15 delegates respectively. A total of 34 faculty were involved in these workshops.
The delegates have rated this as the best scientific program they have attended so far, and Dr.Ralph Vaughan, one of the leaders in the field stated that this was the best Annual Scientific program that he had attended in the last 5 years.
Congratulations to the team!
Congratulations to Dr.Cyprian Mendonca and Dr.Sudheer Medakkar for their sterling work in setting up the workshops.
This meant co-ordinating a large number of delegates and faculty, and getting a large number of instruments and equipments sponsored and make available at two different sites for four different workshops!
Congratulations to Dr.Joy Beamer for being in charge of the social events and organising a Shakespearean themed gala dinner which was hugely appreciated.
And congratulations again to Drs Joy Beamer and Rajneesh Sachdeva for taking a lead in organising the first ever Human Cadaveric Workshop at a DAS annual scientific meeting.
Congratulations to Drs.Rati Danha and Vanessa Hodgetts for the Paediatric workshops and Dr. Carl Hillerman for the adult Simulation workshops.
Thanks to Drs Taj Saran, Dr.Shyam Balasubramanian, Roger Townsend and Joyce Yeung for their tireless efforts in evaluating and marking the abstracts. They also introduced a novel colour coding system which made it more efficient to group and evaluate the posters.
Thanks to the volunteers and the helpers and the many faculty who have contributed so much to make this event the most successful Annual Scientific Meeting hosted by DAS in its 19 year history.
Another first was a dedicated ODP session this year. And Judith O’Grady our ODP made an important presentation on setting up a difficult airway trolley.
Thanks to the UHCW Medical Director, Dr.Meghna Pandit, for her support of the event, and to many colleagues who came to do theatre lists on their days off, so others may attend the meeting.
Truly a great team work!
I was very privileged to lead such a dedicated team!!
Dr.S.Radhakrishna
Chairman Local Organising Committee DAS 2014
Hon Secretary DAS
Consultant Anaesthetist UHCW
28
Jan
