Dear members of the North American Skull Base Society,
It is my honor and privilege to start this term as president of our Society.
This upcoming year will highlight how “The Skull Base is Flat“, celebrating the work of our predecessors and finding ways to further flatten those areas that are still standing. The skull base was flattened not just by drilling protuberances, recesses, or apices but also by removing organizational barriers, disrupting specialty silos and collaborating across continents to improve the care of our patients. Our Society represents “ground zero” of this disruptive collaboration and I want to make this year a continuation of our mission to promote cross specialty and cross border innovation.
As we close the Tampa meeting, we are already planning the NASBS Skull Base Surgery Summer Course that will take place in New Orleans, August 17-20, 2023. We encourage all trainees, either senior residents or fellows to apply for this event that brings together world class faculty in the state of the art cadaver laboratory at LSU. This year’s course will also feature a special episode of the “Surgeon’s Log”, where complex cases will be discussed live by senior faculty and trainees in the collegial environment of one of New Orleans’ famous night venues.
The 2024 Annual Meeting will take place in Atlanta, February 16-18. A new format for the scientific program will provide several “specialty tracks” to streamline the educational content of the meeting and avoid overlapping session with similar specialty topics. The hands-on surgical education will remain a major focus with both the Pre-Meeting Dissection Course at on February 14-15 as well as a curated Rhoton Room dueling dissections program featuring master surgeons and skilled moderators.
New in 2023 will be a special course on “Radiosurgery of the Skull Base” where the technical nuances, side effects and complications specific to those delicate treatment plans will be reviewed and discussed by experts from both radiation oncology and neurosurgery.
Finally, I would like to invite once again all of you to consider how your knowledge, skills and expertise could enhance the educational value of our scientific program. Please email me at sagazzi@usf.edu with a brief description of who you are, your expertise and how your topic/idea could improve the scientific program. I promise that each idea will be carefully considered and evaluated by the Scientific Program Committee and might be incorporated in part or in totality into the Atlanta meeting.
I thank you once again for giving me the privilege of serving as your president.
With best regards,
Siviero Agazzi, MD, MBA, FACS