Brussels, Belgium March 15-21, 2008

This year’s ISICEM in Brussels was again an unqualified success with over 5000 paid registrants and an international faculty representing the best and brightest all converging on Brussels for the 28th year in a row.  And again, our departmental faculty played key leadership and lecturing roles in the program. In fact, for the sixth year in a row, our Department had more invited faculty and lecture presentations at this premier international symposium than any other medical institution in the world. The list of presentations and projects was quite impressive.  Drs. Derek C. Angus and Jean-Paul Mira co-chaired the prestigious pre-symposium closed roundtable conference entitled “Improving clinical trials in the critically ill.” 

L to R: Michael R. Pinsky (Pittsburgh, PA), Jacques Duranteau (Paris, France), Didier Payen (Paris, France), Can Ince (Amsterdam, The Netherlands), Anthony McLean (Penrith, Australia), and John A. Kellum (Pittsburgh, PA) 

The invited conference attendees included many of the world leaders in clinical trial design and review.  Drs. Angus and Mira then presented the summary of the conference findings at the opening session of the main symposium.  Dr. Angus also lectured on “Do we need to study early goal-directed therapy further?” “Regionalizing critical care services,” “We must consider gender and race when deconstructing sepsis clinical trials,” and “Genetic factors in community-acquired pneumonia.”  Dr. Michael R. Pinsky was a member of the Scientific Advisors for the symposium and along with Drs. Didier Payen and Jean-Louis Vincent gave a pre-meeting course entitled “Pulmonary artery catheter course: Practical aspects of hemodynamic monitoring.”  At the symposium proper Dr. Pinsky spoke on “Cardiac dysSynchrony,” “Non-invasive assessment of cardiovascular failure,” “Heart-lung interactions,” “The physiological basis for heart-lung interactions,” and “Cardiac resynchronization therapy in heart failure.” Dr. John Kellum lectured on “Understanding the inflammatory cytokine response,” “Extracorporeal support high dose may not be better,” “Fundamental renal alterations in sepsis,” and “Effects of respiratory acidosis on other organs.”  Dr. Juan Ochoa spoke on “How many calories with feeding,” “The difference between trauma and sepsis,” and “Can we improve outcomes in trauma?” Finally, four of our trainees (Alan Heffner, Hyung Kim, Bouchra Lamia, and Florian Mayr) presented posters of their research (below).

• Lamia B, Kim HK, Heffner A, Severyn D, Gomez H, Puyana JC, Pinsky MR. How accurate are different arterial pressure-derived estimates of cardiac output and stroke volume variation measures in critically ill patients? 2008; Crit Care 12(Suppl 2):S40.

• Lamia B, Tanabe M, Kim HK, Gorcsan III J, Pinsky MR. Color-coded speckle tracking of radial strain dyssynchrony analysis in a canine model of left bundle branch block and cardiac resynchronization therapy. 2008; Crit Care 12(Suppl 2):S247-8.

• Mayr FB, Yende S, Milbrandt EB, Kellum JA, Reade MC, Angus DC. Racial disparities in quality of care of community-acquired pneumonia. 2008 Crit Care; 12(Suppl 2):P424.

• Reade C, Milbrandt EB, Yende S, Shook SL, Kong L, Angus DC, Kellum JA for the GenIMS Investigators. Coagulation in hospitalized community-acquired pneumonia: disturbances in even the least ill. Crit Care 2008; 12(Suppl 2):P202.