News & Media

STS News, Spring 2018 -- New STS officers and directors were elected during the Annual Membership (Business) Meeting on Monday, January 29, at the 54th Annual Meeting in Fort Lauderdale. The membership elected Keith S. Naunheim, MD as STS President for 2018-2019. Additionally, Robert S.D. Higgins, MD, MSHA was elected First Vice President, and Joseph A. Dearani, MD was elected Second Vice President.  The following also were elected or reelected by the STS voting membership at the Annual Meeting: Secretary: Joseph F. Sabik III, MD Treasurer: Thomas E. MacGillivray, MD Directors-at-Large:  Kevin D. Accola, MD Vinod H. Thourani, MD Ara A. Vaporciyan, MD

STS News, Spring 2018 -- For Mitchell J. Magee, MD, becoming involved in political advocacy was his way to influence patient care beyond the operating room and the health care setting. “While we all derive immense satisfaction from providing the best care to each individual patient, we are often confronted with limitations that we and our patients feel powerless to impact,” he said. “It has been personally and professionally satisfying to learn through STS advocacy that we are not powerless, and we can make a difference.” Dr. Magee, who is Surgical Director of Thoracic Oncology and the Minimally Invasive Therapy Institute for Lung and Esophagus at Medical City Dallas Hospital, recently received the Society’s Key Contact of the Year Award for his extraordinary efforts in advocating for the specialty. Mitchell J. Magee, MD received the Society’s Key Contact of the Year Award this past January (from left: Chair of the STS Council on Health Policy and Relationships Alan M. Speir, MD, Dr. Magee, and STS President Keith S. Naunheim, MD) He has attended many STS Legislative Fly-Ins in Washington, DC, and said his first Fly-In, in 2014, was the most enlightening. “The STS staff provided all of the tools that I needed, including a planned schedule of meetings with my representatives or their staffs, talking points for those meetings, and materials to leave behind. I also was grouped with other STS members, many of whom were Fly-In veterans. They showed me the ropes and made delivery of our messages more effective,” Dr. Magee said. He said that he was impressed with how diligently the representatives and their staffs listened. “It was apparent how much our opinions were respected and how genuinely interested the Congressional staff members were in understanding our concerns and how these issues impact us and our patients as their constituents,” Dr. Magee said. This initial positive experience in Washington led to annual meetings with his representatives, either in DC or their local offices in Dallas. These meetings have helped Dr. Magee foster personal relationships with his representatives and their key staff. Mitchell J. Magee, MD met with Rep. Pete Sessions (left) at an STS Legislative Fly-In in Washington, DC, last fall. One such relationship is with Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), Chairman of the House Rules Committee, who represents the Dallas area. Dr. Magee was invited to join the Congressman’s National Physicians’ Council for Healthcare Policy. “Rep. Sessions regularly seeks my input, which reflects that of the Society,” Dr. Magee said. “He knows that STS is a data-driven resource.” STS staff recently helped Dr. Magee create talking points about the benefits of accessing Medicare claims data for longitudinal research. Those talking points were then used during a Physicians’ Council meeting.  “By engaging policymakers to identify the issues impacting medicine and possible legislative solutions, Dr. Magee is helping physicians and patients across the country,” Rep. Sessions said. “His passion for advocacy is truly inspiring.” Although some cardiothoracic surgeons fully support advocacy efforts, Dr. Magee acknowledges that others may have a cynical view of the political process and use it as an excuse for not participating; he urged them to reconsider. “It has been personally and professionally satisfying to learn through STS advocacy that we are not powerless, and we can make a difference.” Mitchell J. Magee, MD “I certainly don’t agree with all of my representatives on every issue; with some of my representatives, I disagree on many issues,” Dr. Magee said. “Cardiothoracic surgeons share a desire to provide the best for our patients. Whether or not we agree with the process or like our representatives, we still must work to benefit our patients, the specialty, and the Society.”  To learn more about how you can become involved in STS advocacy efforts, visit sts.org/advocacy or contact the STS Government Relations office.

STS News, Spring 2018 -- More than 4,200 people, including more than 2,100 cardiothoracic surgeons and allied health care professionals, gathered in Fort Lauderdale January 27–31 for the STS 54th Annual Meeting. To view meeting photos, program content, and daily editions of the STS Meeting Bulletin, visit sts.org/annual-meeting-archive. Embracing Failures Serves as a Catalyst to Success Drawing from both the profession and the sport that he loves, Richard L. Prager, MD encouraged attendees of his Presidential Address at the STS 54th Annual Meeting to “see their realities” and “make seeing and knowledge continuous with each other.” “Professional innovation is our responsibility, and recognizing we are a creative specialty, I would offer that we—as surgeons—and our professional societies must be the leaders in accountability and transparency. To do so, we must embrace and advance performance measurement and analytics, performance feedback, and performance improvement,” he said. Dr. Prager’s work with quality improvement initiatives has been his professional calling, according to Keith S. Naunheim, MD, who introduced Dr. Prager. It was therefore fitting that the focus of Dr. Prager’s address was the vital role of performance measurement and feedback in achieving success. Richard L. Prager, MD highlighted the importance of performance measurement. Dr. Prager took attendees on a journey of quality improvement initiatives in cardiovascular surgery, highlighting the STS National Database and the Michigan Society of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgeons Quality Collaborative, the latter of which he now directs. As one example of the Quality Collaborative’s power in improving outcomes, Dr. Prager described an initiative to increase the use of the internal mammary artery in coronary bypass surgery. Its success resulted from identifying rates of use at various sites, offering educational sessions, creating an exclusion form for operating surgeons who chose not to use the internal mammary artery, and providing feedback. Subsequent Quality Collaborative initiatives were successful in reducing ventilator time, decreasing unnecessary blood transfusions, and identifying when the critical or sentinel thought process or care process occurred leading to a patient’s death. “Cardiac and thoracic surgeons have a unique opportunity with the data we have from our registries in the United States and worldwide to explore our outcomes and comparative performances, and—with understanding and feedback, discussion, and resetting of approaches and goals—create improvements, knowledge, and benefit for patients and our national health care systems,” he said. "Accepting performance feedback and looking at our outcomes is as much about our character as our talent or ability as surgeons." Richard L. Prager, MD Dr. Prager then reinforced the integral role of performance analysis and feedback for success in the sport he loves: tennis. Through short video clips of interviews with players and coaches, attendees heard how performance measurement, performance feedback style and timing, and personal qualities lead to improvement and success. Dr. Prager captured the essence of the interviews by noting that cardiothoracic surgeons must embrace their failures, as that is the path to greatness, and should always think about getting better—not winning, but getting better—in order to be successful. “The commitment of [tennis] players is unwavering and the recognition that performance feedback is essential is understood by every player at every level. Perhaps we can learn from their commitment and approaches,” said Dr. Prager. “Accepting performance feedback and looking at our outcomes is as much about our character as our talent or ability as surgeons, and as our future tennis stars recognize, there always are ways to improve,” he added. “For all of us, while this may seem to be an aspirational narrative, the mastery of the approach, whether it is a hospital network, an individual hospital, or an individual surgeon, our professional innovation, our seeing, will create success.” Award Winners Honored The STS Annual Meeting offered the opportunity to recognize those who are making an impact on the organization and the specialty. The following were honored by the Society in Fort Lauderdale: Richard L. Prager, MD with Distinguished Service Award winners (from left) Cameron D. Wright, MD, Francis C. Nichols III, MD, and Marshall L. Jacobs, MD Distinguished Service Award Distinguished Service Awards recognize those who have made significant and far-reaching contributions to the Society. The 2018 recipients were Marshall L. Jacobs, MD, Francis C. Nichols III, MD, and Cameron D. Wright, MD. Earl Bakken Scientific Achievement Award The Earl Bakken Scientific Achievement Award was presented to Robert H. Bartlett, MD, who is best known for developing the lifesaving heart-lung technology known as extracorporeal membrane oxygenation. The Bakken Award honors individuals who have made outstanding scientific contributions that have enhanced the practice of cardiothoracic surgery and patients’ quality of life. President’s Award The President’s Award was presented to David D. Odell, MD, MMSc from Northwestern University for his paper, “Significant Variation in Compliance With Lung Cancer Quality Measures Exists Across US Hospitals.” Selected by the STS President, this award recognizes an outstanding scientific abstract by a lead author who is either a resident or a surgeon 5 years or less in practice. Poster Awards Adult Cardiac Surgery: Risk Model for In-Hospital Mortality in Aortic Surgery for Ascending Aortic Aneurysm in the United States Using the STS National Database (Makoto Mori, MD) Cardiothoracic Surgical Education: Preferences in Pathway to Becoming a Cardiothoracic Surgeon: A Survey of Current Cardiothoracic Surgery Residents (Trevor A. Davis) Congenital Heart Surgery: Aortic Extension to Relieve Pulmonary Artery Compression Following Norwood Palliation (Luke M. Wiggins, MD) Critical Care: Addressing Diaphragm Dysfunction in Cardiac Surgery Patients: Successful Therapeutic Use with Current Technology and Future Prophylactic Use of Temporary Diaphragm Pacing Utilizing Intramuscular Electrodes (Raymond P. Onders, MD) General Thoracic Surgery: Fabrication of a 3-Dimensional Bioprinted Tracheal Scaffold with Fibrous Cover and Cartilaginous Regeneration (David Zeltsman, MD) Quality: Patient-Reported Experience After Cardiac Surgery: Identifying Areas for Improvement (Meghana Helder, MD) Photo Gallery View photos from the Annual Meeting, including highlights such as Shark Tank, the Presidential Address by Richard L. Prager, MD, award winners, and popular hands-on STS University courses. Access STS 54th Annual Meeting Online STS Annual Meeting Online provides access to more than 100 hours of recorded sessions. Access to Annual Meeting Online was included with Annual Meeting registration. Non-attendees can purchase the online product at sts.org/AMonline. Annual Meeting by the Numbers 2,149 professional registrants 60 countries represented by registrants. Countries with the most registrants: United States, Japan, Canada, United Kingdom, and Brazil and Germany (tie) 130 exhibiting companies and organizations 226 pieces of bovine and porcine tissue purchased for STS University