2019 AANS Annual Scientific Meeting Preview

The tumor sessions at the 2019 AANS Annual Scientific Meeting are only a few weeks away. We are excited that Linda Liau, MD, PhD, MBA, FAANS, has agreed to headline our first scientific session as the 2019 Bittner lecturer. We anticipate her talk will cover her groundbreaking work in bringing advanced brain tumor immunotherapy from bench to bedside. Dr. Liau’s talk is followed by oral presentations from the top-scoring abstracts and award winners.

In the remaining scientific sessions, our approach has been to focus on areas of controversy in the care of brain tumor patients and highlighting areas where emerging concepts in molecular genetics can be leveraged to improve surgical decision-making. The Tuesday session will focus on state-of-the-art care of meningioma patients, featuring invited lectures by Ian Dunn, MD, FAANS; Priscilla Brastianos, MD; and Michael McDermott, MD, FAANS. There will be an additional Point-counterpoint session on “Leaving Residual Meningioma: No Big Deal or Cardinal Sin.” Leading this discussion will be William Couldwell, MD, PhD, FAANS, and Jacques Morcos, MD, FAANS.

On Wednesday, the theme of the session is Safely Pushing the Limits of Glioma Resection. Lectures by Mitchel Berger, MD, FAANS; Dan Cahill, MD, PhD, FAANS; Colin Watts, MBBS, PhD; and Costas Hadjipanayis, MD, PhD, FAANS, cover surgical approaches to deep seated gliomas, the incorporation of intraoperative bedside molecular data, a review of the evidence supporting decision-making in glioma surgery as well as emerging technologies to safely maximize extent of resection.

This year, we will have a record number of tumor abstracts (39) being presented on outstanding research all over the world. This includes two late-breaking abstracts on Monday and two rapid fire sessions Wednesday afternoon.