International Society of Urological Pathology
Minutes of the Annual General Meeting
Saturday March 12, 2016 6:15 pm to 6:45 pm
Seattle, Washington
Present: Dr. Lars Egevad (The President of ISUP), Dr. Christina Magi Galluzzi (President-Elect), Dr. Hemamali Samaratunga (Secretary), Dr. Ming Zhou (Treasurer), and 125 other members of the Society.
- Call to order
The President, Lars Egevad called the meeting to order and welcomed the participants at 6.15 pm.
- Apologies
Apologies for unavoidable absence received from Dr John Cheville
- Minutes of previous meetings
The minutes of the previous AGM held in Boston on 21 March 2015
have previously been distributed to all members and are available on the website. These were taken as read and approved. JRS/HS
- In Memorium
The president announced the sad news of the passing of one of the ISUP members, Dr Thomas Sebo at the age of 61. The funeral service had been held earlier in the day. Dr Sebo had requested donations to the National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center. A moment of silence was observed in honour of Dr Sebo.
- Reports
5.1: Annual Report of the President
The president reminded the members that he had promised to carry out a number of activities which he announced at the last USCAP meeting. Last year was extremely busy with completion of the majority of these tasks.
The ISUP hosted an Expert Consultation on testicular and penile tumors in conjunction with the 2015 USCAP Annual meeting on the 22nd March. This was greatly appreciated by the members and was a huge success. The President has been informed that the meeting proceedings are in preparation.
Another major ISUP-related meeting last year was the European Society of Pathology meeting in Belgrade. Several members of the ISUP leadership presented at this meeting.
The proceedings from the ISUP Consensus Meeting on Prostate Cancer Grading held in November 2014 in Chicago, have appeared in paper print in the American Journal of Surgical Pathology last month.
The most important achievements last year was the completion of the 4th Edition of the WHO blue book on Tumours of the Urinary System and Male Genital Organs. The presence of many ISUP members on the WHO working groups emphasizes the central role that ISUP has taken in the development of urological research. It was also pointed out that many of the ISUP Consensus Conferences held over the last decade had a significant impact on the practice of urological pathology.
Last year, The ISUP was recognized as an official sponsoring society of The American Journal of Surgical Pathology. This means that the ISUP name appears on the front cover of every issue. The President reminded members that this was largely due the efforts of Dr Brett Delahunt. Publication of a number of consensus meeting proceedings in this Journal has contributed to the impact factor of the Journal both in terms downloads and citation rates.
The new ISUP website is up and running. A private IT company in Stockholm and the President were responsible for setting up the website. The funding was entirely by the President through external grants. It is a modern website which is easy to navigate with only a few minor problems that are being sorted out. There is a mobile friendly version. Since it was launched in December last year that have been 1800 visitors and >62,000 page views from 93 countries. These have included remote areas such as Ghana, Kurdistan, Morocco, Mongolia, Senegal and Uzbekistan, which would otherwise have been relatively hard to reach out to by the ISUP.
The case of the month function of the website will be re-organised and there will be one Editor. Dr Andrew Evans has been appointed Editor and there will be a number of reviewers including Mahul Amin, Christina Magi-Galluzzi and others. Digital slides may also be used in the future.
The President informed the meeting that the website also is a portal to extensive information about the Society including its history.
An enormous amount of time and effort have been spent on developing the Imagebase. The President thanked the members of the 3 expert panels for their efforts in uploading images, grading and voting on diagnosis of the cases.
The ISUP Interactive Conference will be held tomorrow, Sunday March 13 at 12.30pm. The venue was shifted from Grand Ballroom B to Grand Ballroom C at the Sheraton Hotel. There will be a registration desk outside where attendees need to write their names in block letters, so they could be acknowledged in publications. They will receive voting devices at the registration desk. This meeting is only for ISUP members. There will be a reception during a 45 minute break.
Another project last year has been the development of the International Collaboration of Cancer Reporting of minimal datasets. This was chaired by Dr John Srigley with other ISUP members involved in the working groups. The resulting documents will be presented within a few months.
Last year, the President appointed a Constitution and By-Laws Committee chaired by Dr Christina Magi-Galluzzi, the President-Elect. The committee has not finalised their recommendations yet. There was a discussion regarding this at the Council meeting today and hopefully, recommendations will be made within the year.
Dr John Srigley has developed a Code of Conduct for the Society. The Code of Conduct will be circulated among the members by email after the USCAP meeting. This has been adopted as a policy document by Council.
A recent survey showed that 2/3 of members favored a bladder consensus conference next year. The survey also showed that the overwhelming majority of members were very positive about the Society. There were some comments about having new speakers at various ISUP related meetings. This was thought to be a very good suggestion and will be remembered when setting up the bladder consensus conference.
The 18th Annual Grawitz dinner will be held at Loulay’s Restaurant 600 Union street at 6.30pm on Sunday 13 March. The President thanked the local organizers including Dr Larry True for organizing this event.
Plans for the next year include setting up a bladder consensus conference in San Antonio, Texas. An organizing committee has already been appointed. A chair has been approached, who is considering the offer and will hopefully accept. This will also be an opportunity to include new and younger members of the Society who have published on bladder pathology.
There are plans to expand the functions of the Imagebase to include, for example staging of bladder and prostate cancer. Using digital slides may be an option. The possibility of a free public version has been considered as this will be a way to disseminate basic knowledge to low resource countries and also to showcase ISUP activities. Further work will be done on the ISUP website. The case of the month function will be streamlined and an Alphabetic index will be set up in time.
The major meeting other than the USCAP this year is the ESP/IAP International Congress in Cologne. The local host is Dr Glen Kristiansen who has put together an exciting GU program. Members were encouraged to attend.
The President discussed the International Standardization of Uropathology
project. A web-based educational program is planned which will be of great benefit, particularly for low-resource countries. So far 9 countries are involved.
5.2: Annual Report of the Secretary
The Secretary noted that the past year had been exceptionally busy and productive with a number of new activities undertaken by the Society. Many members and officers were enlisted in carrying out various tasks. There has been an effort to communicate more frequently with members with 10 e-mailouts sent within the year covering various topics. Since the launch of the website there has been a major increase in membership. At present the membership of the Society stands at 727 Ordinary Members and 145 Resident Members giving a total membership of 872. This is an increase of nearly 150 new members over the past 12 months. Some teething problems had been experienced with the website, mostly relating to log-in issues. The Secretary thanked Jonas Hornblad for his outstanding contribution in the development of the website and as a trouble-shooter. The Secretary emphasized that if members change their e-mail addresses this must be communicated to the Society, otherwise the member will not be able to log in on to the website. The Secretary also made mention of issues relating to the organization of venues and the associated catering relating to the ISUP related meetings at USCAP and acknowledged the assistance received from the staff of the Sheraton Hotel and the USCAP staff.
5.3: Annual Report of the Treasurer
The Treasurer reported that the ISUP financial status was extremely favorable. He encouraged members to visit the ISUP website to enjoy the new features and pay membership dues. He emphasized that the ISUP depends on membership dues to pay for most of its activities. He thanked the President for funding the new website and the Secretary for funding the ISUP reception this year.
Award presentation
The ISUP Excellence in Urological Pathology awards Committee was chaired by Adeboye Osunkoya with Co-Chairs Ondřej Hes and Glen Kristiansen.
Awards for 2016 went to Benjamin Buelow, Vipulkumar Dadhania and Sara Falzarano.
Stipends
Sampson Fine chaired the Stipends Committee. Michelle Hirsch, Gladell Paner and Hikmat Al-Ahmadie served as judges for awarding the Stipends. Martin Magers, Sounak Gupta, Previn Gulavita and Rola Saleeb were awarded stipends of $500 each.
The next ISUP AGM will take place in San Antonio, 2016
The meeting adjourned at 16:54 p.m.