REPORT OF THE 99th ANNUAL MEETING OF
THE UNITED STATES AND CANADIAN ACADEMY OF PATHOLOGY
March 20-26, 2010 - Washington, D.C.




REPORT OF THE 99th ANNUAL MEETING OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADIAN ACADEMY OF PATHOLOGY - March 20-26, Washington DC

The 99th annual meeting of the USCAP was held in Washington DC and was by all accounts a resounding success. 4164 total physician-pathologists were in attendance Welcome Home.

The General Registration of the meeting was the second highest in the history of USCAP attendance - over 4100 (one year ago in Boston being the highest--4262). These attendance figures continue to make the annual meeting of the Academy the largest gathering, by far, of physician-pathologists in the world. Indeed, for the past nine years we have regularly had 3000-4200 physician-pathologists or more in attendance. 947 of the registrants/attendees at the Washington DC meeting were from international countries outside of the US and Canada. The countries (and the number of international visitors from each country) included:

United Kingdom (77), Spain (69), Japan (67), Italy (57), Brazil (55), France (54), Germany (45), Ireland (42), S. Korea (42), Australia (40), Mexico (40), Netherlands (34), Portugal (29), Argentina (26), Switzerland (25), Turkey (25), Taiwan (17), Austria (16), Greece (14), Colombia (13), Belgium (11), and all the other countries 1-10 friends. Thus, in toto, 947 international visitors from 68 countries outside of the USA and Canada were in attendance (23 % of our total registrants). Pathologists from all 50 states of the US and 8 Canadian provinces were in attendance.

Of the registrants, 2081 were Regular, Sustaining or Emeritus members and 922 were Junior Members . There were 585 pathologists in practice who were not members and 253 residents/fellows who were not members (yet). Thus including the Residents and other students, there were a total of 1175 residents/fellows at our meeting. Each of the last several years we have had a thousand plus residents/fellows/students attend our Annual meetings. The percentage of house staff attending the meeting who are members of the Academy are for the past eight years - 41% , 69%, 67%, 66%, 76%, 84%, 88%, 83%, 85% respectively. This probably relates to the effective recruitment we have had of pathology house staff/fellows/pathologists-in-training in the last 10 years. In July 1999 we had 520 Junior Members; in the following ten-eleven years we recruited over 6500 additional Junior Members (many of which have now become Regular Members). Our present "steady state" of Junior Members is over 2000. Our total USCAP Membership is over 10,600 physician-pathologists.

Dr. Richard Zarbo served a distinguished and quite active term as President of the USCAP. He turned over the gavel and the Presidency to Dr. Stuart Schnitt as the new President of the Academy.

2580 scientific abstracts were submitted for evaluation; this was the second most in our history from last year's all time record (2762). The quality of the submitted abstracts are very high. A record total of 1968 were accepted after "blind" peer review (72%). This is the greatest number of scientific abstracts in anatomic and diagnostic molecular pathology ever presented in history, anywhere, by anyone, at any time! The review is conducted by at least 4 individuals from the Academy (4 "experts" in the area). The percentage of acceptance is generally dependent upon the space available at the hotel (which is usually booked 5-6-7 years in advance of the meeting). We try to accommodate as many quality poster sessions as space allows. Abstracts were submitted from throughout the world (from approximately 40 countries and over 400 academic medical centers and institutions). This was the eighth year for the USCAP to have electronic submission of our scientific abstracts (in conjunction with Marathon, Inc). These scientific abstracts are now online searchable by topic, disease, word, technique, author, institution, etc (www.uscap.org). The USCAP website: www.uscap.org consistently has the last three years of scientific abstracts (over 5000) which are now searchable by topic, disease, author, etc for the last 3 years. In fact because of space limitations in the hotel which was booked long ago, and the incredible unforseen growth of the Academy over 100 high-rated abstracts were accepted as eAbstracts, which are also in our Program Books, two Academy journals, and because of their high scores (but limited space) 110 citeable as abstracts. Of the total of REGULAR abstracts (non-Stowell-Orbison) of 2226, 1595 or 71.6% were accepted (this includes the 110 eAbstracts (all non-Stowell-Orbison). The Stowell-Orbison Pathologists-in-Training abstract data is noted in the next paragraph. Of the 2580 TOTAL (REGULAR PLUS STOWELL-ORBISON) abstracts submitted 1858 were accepted (71.9%) with 280 being platforms and 1578 being posters.

As noted before, 1175 pathologists-in-training attended the various portions of the meeting. 58 plus% of submitted scientific abstracts had a first author who is a pathologist-in-training (compared to 38%, 43% , 53%, 58% the last four years). (this does not count the house staff/fellows that are second, third, etc authors). 354 Stowell-Orbison Abstracts were submitted by Junior pathologists. 263 were accepted for the Stowell-Orbison poster competition (74%), and many others were accepted as regular abstracts. Once again, the "scores" for the accepted Stowell-Orbisons were actually higher than the scores for the "regular" abstracts accepted for presentation (i.e, Non-Stowell-Orbison). There were four co-equal Stowell-Orbison Awards presented and two Certificates of Merit.

The four co-equal recipients, in no specific order, of the Stowell-Orbison Awards are:
Fibroblast-Like Stromal Response Is Host-Dependent While Macrophage-Associated Stromal Response Is Tumor-Dependent: A Study of Stromal Response in Paired Breast Carcinomas from Patients with Dual Primaries
JM Wu, AH Beck, D Witten, K Allison, M van de Rijn, RB West
Stanford University Medical Center, Palo Alto; University of Washington Medical Center, Seattle
Multiple Skin Cancers Arising in Bone Marrow Transplant Recipients Can Exhibit a Donor Origin
RW Lamberts, RS Ritzlin, K Yearsley, SH Barsky
University of Nevada School of Medicine, Reno, NV; The Ohio State University College of Medicine, Columbus, OH; Nevada Cancer Institute, Las Vegas, NV
Lymphovascular Tumor Emboli Recapitulate an In Vitro Mammosphere Stem Cell Phenotype
CE Graham-Lamberts, AL Llewellyn, Y Ye, K Yearsley, SH Barsky
University of Nevada School of Medicine, Reno, NV; The Ohio State University College of Medicine, Columbus, OH; Nevada Cancer Institute, Las Vegas, NV
Differential Gene Expression Profiles of Neurothekeomas, Nerve Sheath Myxomas, Cellular Fibrous Histiocytomas and Schwannomas by Microarray Analysis
S Sheth, X Li, SW Binder, SM Dry
UCLA, Los Angeles, CA




The recipients of the Certificates of Merit are:
Effect of Prostacyclin Treatment on Lesions of Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension
JE Pogoriler, S Rich, M Gomberg-Maitland, S Archer, AN Husain
University of Chicago, Chicago
Molecular, Immunohistochemical, and Ultrastructural Characterization of Clear Cell Papillary Renal Cell Carcinoma
CJ Sailey, M Dvorakova, JC Papadimitriou, JF Borin, T Ali, AV Parwani
University of Maryland Med Ctr, Baltimore, MD; University of Pittsburgh Med Ctr, Pittsburgh, PA




The ADASP/USCAP Autopsy Award winning abstract was:
Acute Aortic Dissection: Changing Spectrum of Clinicopathologic Findings at Autopsy
M Aron, ER Rodriguez, CD Tan
Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH




The ADASP/USCAP Surgical Pathology Award was:
Retrospective Analysis of Lung Transplant Patients between 1991-2009: Improved Survival Is Related to Native Lung Disease
Y Li, Z Hu, J Gagermeier, C Alex, R Love, M Picken
Loyola Univ Med Ctr, Maywood, IL


633 registrants attended the Long Course entitled "Endocrine Pathology including Thyroid Pathology by Drs. Ricardo Lloyd and Yuri Nikiforov. This well-attended Long Course was well received. Early perusals of the critique form show that this course was very well done and very well liked by the registrants. The syllabus was complete/"long" (280 plus pages in length) and this Long Course includes a CD packed full of over six hundred images. This Long Course will be published in the next year in Modern Pathology.(Last year's Long Course is in Modern Pathology).

Sixty half-day Short Courses were presented and very well attended (with a total registration of Short Courses taken being 5194 (the highest in history; three year's ago was the record at 4923) -that is the number of courses attended times the number of attendees at these sessions; an overall average of about 76-80 pathologists/per Short Course offering). From 1999 to the present time, the Academy has had regularly over 4000 in total registration each year. Virtually all of our Short Courses have pre-meeting and post-meeting CD's (56) and many have "Virtual Slides". All but four Short Courses this year had Self-Assessment Modules (SAM) available.

Four Special Courses were offered: one on "Basic Molecular Pathology in Cancer" (headed by Drs. Julia Bridge (Univ. Nebraska)was "sold out" attracting virtually a maximum room number of 432 registrants on Monday. This course has a CD in addition to the extensive syllabus. The ongoing Advanced Molecular Pathology course (headed by Dr. Frederic Barr, Univ. of Pennsylvania) on Tuesday attracted 359 registrants and included a CD in addition to the extensive syllabus (the third highest in history). A third new course in its second year entitled "Careers in Investigative Pathology" directed by Drs. Massimo Loda (Brigham & Women's/Dana Farber) and David Berman (Johns Hopkins). This course was totally filled with 133 attendees. In addition Dr. Sharon Weiss (Emory) gave a course entitled "Navigating the Academic waters: A Survival Course for Residents/Junior Faculty". It also was "sold out".

Twenty - Six Companion Societies presented their educational endeavors on Saturday night and Sunday. The total number of registrants was 2805, by far and away one of the highest in our history (67% of all attendees attended at least one Companion Society). For the past seven years all of the Companion Societies and evening Specialty Conferences' handouts/syllabus have been placed on our website. (www.uscap.org)after the Annual meeting. This year was our fifth year for the Companions and the Specialties to go "paperless". All of the Companion Society handouts were on our USCAP Website at least two weeks before the meeting, and the Specialty Sessions had their unknowns (i.e., Clinical history and unknown slides) up one month before the Annual meeting, with the answers (i.e., text, powerpoints, references, answers, etc) up the morning after that evening Specialty Conference.

The Nathan Kaufman Timely Topic Lecture was given by Dr. Anthony Atala, MD entitled "Regenerative Medicine: New Approaches to Healthcare". His lecture was elegant, timely, "almost futuristic" and very well received by the appreciative audience of over 2200 pathologists.

Dr. Henry Appelman gave the fifty-third Maude Abbot Lecture entitled: "Bowels are Beautiful....and Profitable. The Gut Has Been Good to Me and I Am Grateful". This elegant, quit humorous and wonderful lecture was also attended by over 2200 pathologists. His was truly an outstanding presentation.

The Distinguished Pathologists Award was presented this year to an individual in recognition of his long-term, distinguished service in the development of the discipline of pathology and the USCAP: Dr. Juan Rosai, recognized by the Academy membership for his major and extensive contributions to pathology over the years. Please see the USCAP Website (www.uscap.org) for his biosketch. Also please watch for the unprecedented collection of The Juan Rosai Collection of Surgical Pathology Seminar, free to all on our USCAP Website (more than 19,000 cases from more than 1400 seminars): a comprehensive collection, complete with historical elements and modern diagnostic content. It should be noted that Dr. Victor Reuter, Mrs. Kerry Crockett, and Aperio were instrumental in making this happen.

The President's Award was presented this year to Dr. Jeffrey Myers. His dedication and work for the Academy is way "above and beyond the call of duty". Please see the USCAP Website of the 2010 Annual Meeting for details about this outstanding and dedicated individual who have contributed so much to pathology world-wide.

The F.K. Mostofi Distinguished Service Award went to Drs. John Eble and James Crawford for their important, multiple and extraordinary efforts as Editors-in-Cheif or our Academy's two journals.

The Ramzi Cotran Young Investigator Award was presented to Jorge Reis-Filho, MD, PhD for his seminal work in molecular pathology of breast cancer.

The Benjamin Castleman Award for the most outstanding paper in the field of human pathology was awarded to Adeboye Osunkoya for his paper entitled: "Diagnostic Biomakers for Renal Cell Carcinoma: Selection Using Novel Bioinformatics Systems for Microarray Data Analysis" in the Journal: Human Pathology, 2009 Dec;40(12):1671-8. The Award was presented by Dr. David Louis, Chair of MGH/Boston.

The F. Stephen Vogel Award (for the most outstanding paper published in an Academy journal by a pathologist-in-training ) went to Ibrahim Batal for his paper entitled: "The Significance of Renal C4d Staining in Patients with BK Viruria, Viremia, and Nephropathy" in the Journal: Modern Pathology, 2009 Sept; 1-9

The USCAP in conjunction with Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital/Harvard announced the institution of the Harvey Goldman Master Teacher Award. The first awardee will be announced next year at our 100th Annual Centennial Meeting of the Academy.

The 19 evening Specialty Conferences, which are organ-based, were held from 7:30-9:30 PM, which was a testimony to the continuing endurance of the meeting's registrants. All of the evening Specialty Conferences are online on the Academy's website. For the past six years the unknowns (i.e., clinical history and representative histologic images) are placed on our USCAP website several weeks before the annual meeting, and the answers, complete text, references, etc are placed on our website the next morning after the Specialty Conference for all throughout the world to enjoy.

Additional activities of the Academy have concentrated on the partnership of our two academy journals with the most outstanding medical and science publishing group in the world--Nature Publishing Group. Many of the top scientific breakthroughs of the 20th Century were first reported in the journal - Nature (it is the world's foremost weekly scientific journal by impact factor). Nature Publishing Group (NPG) publishes over 60 high profile society-owned or affiliated journals and 7-8 of the top 20 in the world in impact factor. Both of our Academy's journals now offer 4 pages of free color per published article, rapid advance online publication available 6 weeks after manuscript acceptance, increased international exposure, electronic table of content alerts delivered directly to your inbox highlighting new content each month, online submission of manuscripts and tracking, and reference cross-linking via CrossRef and MEDLINE. Powered by Naturejobs, the Career and Recruitment division of the journal Nature, Pathologyjobs provides recruiters with unique vehicles to advertise. Their Nature website is outstanding with free abstracts of all articles, integrated searches, online archives of all full-text articles from 2000 available through a personal or institutional subscription, and author index-which searches authors names across all available articles. This is a very powerful force in research and education for our members to utilize. In addition, the scientific abstracts for the past three years are now online and searchable. (Please see our USCAP and the Nature websites).

Nature Publishing Group publishes the leading journal in science/medicine and Nature has an impact factor of 31.434! Nature Publishing Group (NPG) publishes 16 of the top 50 journals in Impact Factor in the world, and of their academic/society journals - 16, including our two, are in the top 10 of their respective categories. Scientific American is now part of NPG with its over 140 Nobel-Prize writers.

Our Two Journals (Modern Pathology and Laboratory Investigation) are considered two of the top four or five general pathology diagnostic and investigative journals in the world (including by Impact Factor). Modern Pathology is now the top (by Impact Factor) pathology journal dedicated to general diagnostic anatomic/surgical pathology. 85% of their papers are published online within 30 days, both have impact factors of above 4.5, and connects to over 35,000 professionals in pathology and other disciplines online. Laboratory Investigation (LI) has over 950,000 page views, over 100,000 eTOCs, and 94,000 Pub Med Linkouts, and Modern Pathology has 2 million page views (averaging more than 70,000 webpage visits/month), 84,000 eTOCs, and 147,000 PubMed Linkouts each year. No one can match that! And our impact factors continue to climb. Our journals reach over 70 different countries. These journals both now have four (4!) Pages of Free Color available.

Other educational endeavors by the USCAP these past few years include:
  1. The establishment of the eAcademy (go to: www.uscap.org for further information). This online long distance-learning tool, renders CME and/or SAM credit for a minor charge. This is under the Direction of Dr. John Sinard (Yale). The APECS cases (anatomic pathology cases) started in December, 2008 and there are presently over three dozen interactive, dynamic cases of all types available.
  2. The First and Largest American Board of Pathology-approved "Self Assessment Modules" (SAM): Diagnostic Cytopathology 07. We now have multiple SAM offerings: see our USCAP Website for a listing of our "five sets" of SAM offerings. According to the ABP the USCAP has more SAMS than any other society (one for every day of the year: over 360).
  3. The continuing development of the CME Portfolio for members.
  4. Continuing involvement in altruistic activities, including West and Eastern Sub-Saharan Africa.
  5. Continuing growth of the free USCAP "Knowledge Hub/Pathology Portal"
  6. Over 500 Virtual Slides are now up on the USCAP Website for free (e.g., IAP Centennial; Annual evening Specialty Conferences)
  7. The continued "Naturization"of Laboratory Investigation (watch for future developments of this type for Modern Pathology coming soon!)
  8. The development of the Complete Itinerary Planner (electronic planner) for the Annual Meeting
  9. Online Membership Renewal and Registration
  10. A Poster Creation Service and ability to demonstrate entire abstract online
  11. Pod casts of the IAP Centennial KeyNote Addresses, and 2007-2010 Annual addresses.
  12. Online Evaluation of all of the Academy's Courses
  13. The Recruitment of a Director of Marketing and Development for the Academy (Mr. John Garrard)
  14. Many other upcoming opportunities for our members.


EXHIBITORS: In addition to the high number of attendees, we also reached record-breaking numbers in our Exhibit Hall. With 112 exhibitors and 234 booths, this proved to be our largest Exhibit Show in history, with a 12% increase over last year. In fact since 2003, we have doubled the exhibit booths! In recent years, the Academy has twice won Tradeshow Week's Award for the "Fastest 50 Growing Shows". With our 100th meeting in 2011 we anticipate this number will continue to increase.

By action of Council, the USCAP instituted a Strategic Planning Initiative in 2003-2004 to look at the future of pathology and The Academy. Summer retreats (actually advances) directed by Drs. David Hardwick and Jeffrey Myers have continued, and implementation of these educational goals and strategies have been implemented, and are continuing to be implemented. The Long Term Strategic Planning Initiatives continue.

For the last six years, the Academy rolled out a number of new initiatives for our Junior members including: Several programs for pathologists-in-training were instituted-- including the Fellowship Fair with 40-55 institutions to discuss hundreds of fellowships; the new evening Specialty Conference just for house staff/fellows; and the House Staff Hospitality Room where Academy and Pathology leaders from throughout North America were present to talk with the house staff. In addition the Weiss and Loda/Berhman courses listed above are aimed for these young pathologists as well.

The USCAP's annual summer pathology review course and update- Diagnostic Pathology, with its fourteen outstanding faculty was held in Niagra Falls (July 11-17, 2009). It was Directed by Drs. Stuart Schnitt (BID, Boston) and Jennifer Hunt. (See www.uscap.org for complete schedule). Last year's course (98) came with a 1100 page handout and a 3800 image CD-ROM! The 2010 Meeting will be held July 10-16, 2010 at the Hyatt Regency at Lake Tahoe, NV.

This was the fifth year for the USCAP Winter (January) Course entitled "Diagnostic Cytopathology" under the initiation, leadership and direction of Dr. Celeste Powers (Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond). This 2 l/2 day weekend intense and advanced course has a complete handout and the extensive CD (with thousands of images) were very well received. There were over 100 individuals in attendance in January 2010.

The educational initiative of the USCAP is Practical Pathology Seminars, in its fourth year, under the direction of Dr. John Goldblum (Cleveland Clinic) . It was held from April 30-May 3, 2009 in San Francisco at the Hyatt at Fisherman's Wharf and will have approximately 100 in attendance. Five short courses given on topics including: Gyn, GI, GU, Endocrine/Thyroid, and Hemepath by eleven outstanding faculty. The next PPS is in New York City, April 29-May 2, 2010. Topics include: Dermatopathology, Pulmonary Pathology, GI Pathology, Hematopathology and Soft Tissue Pathology.

Next year's CENTENNIAL annual (100th Annual) USCAP meeting will be held in San Antonio, Texas from February 26 to March 4, 2011. The Long Course entitled "Practical Solutions to Common Problems in Pulmonary Pathology" by Drs. Myers and Luise-Katzenstein. As usual there will be an extensive handout/syllabus and a CD with a great many images. Two new courses on Basic/Elementary Molecular Pathology (given by Dr. Jennifer Hunt et al.) and Basic Cytopathology (given by Dr. Elsheikh et al) will be introduced.

There are several additions to our USCAP Committees: Four new members of the Education Committee (under the Direction of Dr. John Goldblum) are: Drs. Wendy Frankel, Dan Arber, Ilan Weinreb, and Jason Harnick.

Dr. Linda Ferrell (UCSF) , is by vote of the membership the new Vice-President of the Academy, and Dr. Greg Fuller, MD Anderson) is President-Elect. The newly elected (by the Academy membership) Council members are: Kathleen Cho (Univ. Michigan), Andy Renshaw (Baptist Medical Center, Miami), and Christopher Fletcher (B&W/Boston).

The Finance Committee is now headed by Dr. Peter Banks (Carolinas Medical Center) and our newest member is Dr. Jeffrey Saffitz. The Publications Committee is now chaired by Dr. Ronald DeLellis with Drs Tony Yachnis and Murray Resnick as our newest members. The newest members of the Young Investigator Committee are Drs. John Eble, Laura Lamps, and Abdul Abbas. New Members of the Castleman Award Committee include: Drs Julia Bridge and Adam Bagg. The newest members of the Vogel Award Committee are Drs. Tarik Tihan and Kay Washington . Dr. Steven Black-Schaffer is our newest Alternate Delegate to the will join Dr. Jack Strong as Delegate, and Drs. Silva and Bill Gardner as a member of the Pathology Section Council at the AMA House of Delegates. All of the members of the various USCAP Committees are noted on our website (www.uscap.org).

Please check the USCAP Website (www.uscap.org) for an immense number of educational materials which are free. Over six year's worth of our evening 19 plus Specialty Conferences and over 26 Companion Society's materials are up as well over 75 excellent, ended Short Courses and available to anyone who wishes to utilize them. In addition, as noted before, three successive years of our scientific abstracts are now online and searchable, and can be downloaded, as well as many Short Courses. That's over 5000 searchable cutting-edge scientific abstracts! We also have a Table of Contents by over 24 organ systems/subspecialties of our nineteen hundred entries/modules for all to have for free. Our USCAP Website continues to have record-setting hits with over 46 million "hits" and 5.6 million page downloads in 2008 from 22,000 unique pathologists in 168 countries–a true global forum for our colleagues. That also includes from 10,000-15,000 slide views a month for our Virtual Slides. In 2009 we had 51 million "hits" and 6.1 million page downlods from 24,000 plus pathologists in over 168 countries. The USCAP is happy to provide this free altruistic service for pathologists throughout the world. Go to: www.uscap.org for the largest eBook in the history of anatomic and diagnostic molecular pathology, for free (the March 09 figures shows over 10 million "hits" and page views, an all-time record. Over 1600 different educational offerings/modules were "hit" in March 09), and each of our 1900 educational modules are receiving at least 20 page downloads each month (thus each and every one of our educational modules is helping someone throughout the world). The March 2010 website showed over 17 million "hits" from over 33,500 individual pathologists and virtually every educational module on our website received at least 20 page downloads that month!!!!

At present the USCAP membership is in excess of 10,600 pathologists (from 77 countries in addition to the US and Canada); over 2000 of those are Junior Members. We continue to grow and be vibrant. It is clear that our colleagues in pathology are a very dedicated and professional lot. We are proud to be associated with them.

Thanks for all your support for all those we serve--our patients, our physicians and our students.


Fred Silva, Secretary-Treasurer and Executive Vice President, USCAP
April 8, 2010