Welcome to the 42nd annual Vascular & Endovascular, Issues, Techniques, and Horizons Symposium (VEITHsymposium). This year’s program promises to be one of the best, most comprehensive, and most thought-provoking of any of our meetings. This year we celebrate our 42nd anniversary and have introduced several improvements.

Nearly 600 international clinician/educators have gathered to provide attendees with the latest topics, advances, and data that span the breadth of vascular diseases, diagnostic procedures, medical treatments, interventional procedures and open surgical advances for treating vascular disease that are of importance to the global vascular community. As is the hallmark of the VEITHsymposium, the 5-day program will run from dawn to dusk daily and will be fully captured in our online library.

With more than 1000 rapid-fire, 5-6-minute presentations delivered in over 120 sessions, symposium faculty will cover the full range of topics pertinent to clinical practice and research, including the latest pharmacologic, radiologic, surgical, and endovascular techniques. They will discuss when the various treatment options are justified and, importantly, when they are not.

Top vascular experts from around the world will provide updates on the latest clinical trials and offer insight into the real-life application of the most recent data in order to close the gap between the current state of knowledge and actual clinical practice.

Controversial issues will be approached from multiple perspectives to ensure a balanced, unbiased exposure of topics and to provide audience members with all of the information they need to make informed choices in their own practices.

This year our meeting has an increased emphasis on venous disease. Three full days of the meeting are devoted to exciting new developments in venous disease of all sorts and active endovascular treatments in this rapidly expanding area of opportunity.

Some of the program’s other hot topics will be the continuing controversies surrounding parallel grafts (chimneys, and snorkel and sandwich grafts) and multilayer open stents versus fenestrated and branched endografts; carotid stenting; new developments in the treatment of aortic dissections; a day devoted to the management of arteriovenous malformations; new developments in the endovascular treatment of lower-extremity ischemia, particularly below the knee; the latest developments in EVAR and TEVAR including experiences with a plethora of new endovascular grafts and devices that have appeared on the scene in the last year; and improvements in the medical treatment of vascular disease and vascular patients undergoing surgery and other interventions. Important issues to vascular specialists and outpatient vascular treatment will also be highlighted.

In line with our belief that the treatment of venous disease is an important new horizon for vascular specialists and vascular surgeons, this year’s program will include a special session all-day Tuesday, focused in the morning on management options for pulmonary embolism: “Management of Pulmonary Embolism: The Momentum For Effective Treatment Is Real – Part 1,” led by Dr. Michael R. Jaff; and “Management of Pulmonary Embolism: The Momentum For Effective Treatment Is Real – Part 2,” led by Dr. Kenneth Ouriel.

This year, there will also be sessions devoted to crucial issues for vascular specialists including changing relationships with government and the FDA and how to survive under new reimbursement rules and regulations including Obamacare. Our physician/educators will also offer a glimpse into some new techniques and technologies that have been available in Europe, but are just being approved in the United States, such as drug-eluting balloons and stents.

Attendees will notice some other exciting changes to this year’s program. We have included breaks in the schedule to encourage exploration of state-of-the-art technology, products, and services available in the Exhibit areas and Pavilions. The Exhibit Halls are crowded with displays and booths of particular interest to vascular surgeons. The Pavilions and Exhibits also offer attendees the chance to meet faculty and to network with other attendees and industry partners. This is the place to learn about exciting new technologies and developments in our field.

In addition, there will be Associate Faculty programs which will give younger and less well-known vascular specialists the opportunity to present their work at the podium.

Again this year, an online library will be available for a minimal fee of $75 for meeting attendees and will include access to talks, slides, videos, and panels from the meeting.

This year we will also feature more concurrent sessions. Although we will make every effort to ensure that these sessions do not deal with similar areas at the same time, two topics will sometimes be presented simultaneously. If this occurs, attendees should note in their program the talk they wished to hear but could not.

Within 14 days of the conclusion of the meeting, these missed talks and others can be revisited in the online library. Slides and audio – fully synchronized with the program and indexed by presenter, topic, or session – will be included in that library.

Welcome to the 2015 VEITHsymposium