SAMBA 34th Annual Meeting

SAMBA held another highly successful annual meeting in Austin TX, May 9-11, 2019. We had several hundred attendees, excellent speakers, dynamic sessions and numerous exhibitors. The venue for our 34^th annual meeting was the JW Marriott in downtown Austin.

The meeting kicked off on Thursday morning with a panel titled, Enhancing Enhanced Recovery: Transitioning from 23 hour stay to same day discharge moderated by Dr. Girish Joshi. Dr. Joshi, a past president of SAMBA is an international expert on the care of ambulatory surgery patients. This session had presentations on outpatient cancer procedures such as mastectomy and prostatectomy along with a surgeon’s perspective on outpatient hysterectomies. Throughout the 3 day program participants heard from practitioners, directors of ambulatory surgicenters, industry leaders, the President-elect of the American Society of Anesthesiologists and representatives of regulatory agencies. Lectures covered topics such as obstructive sleep apnea, dealing with an active shooter in an ASC, and preparing for disasters. Sessions on “Practicing beyond the SAMBA guidelines” and “How to stop your surgeon from prescribing opioids” were well attended. There were panel discussions, a regional anesthesia workshop and several small group breakout sessions where attendees met with experts and leaders to discuss caring for patients with substance abuse, diabetes or a left ventricular assist device in your GI suite/NORA location.

There was an entire afternoon OBA Symposium with a focus on patient selection, preparing for crises in an office setting, how to set up and run a mobile anesthesia service and safety with anesthesia for dentistry.

Dr. Thomas Cutter, past President of SAMBA, received the 2019 Distinguished Service Award. The Board of Directors meeting held in conjunction with the annual meeting saw a change in leadership with Dr. Kumar Belani completing his term as President and the passing of the gavel to Dr Basem Abdelmalak. The meeting was closed out with a fun social event focused on country music and great BBQ. In spite of the need to move this indoors due to the weather everyone had enjoyed the conversations, food, drink and camaraderie which has always defined SAMBA’s annual meeting.

We are looking forward to seeing you all in Orlando Florida at our first joint SAMBA-ASCA meeting, from May 13-16, 2020.