Cory Shum, recipient of the President’s Award
We had a spectacular meeting in September at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in New Orleans. This year we collaborated with the Southern Headache Society and included breakout sessions for both chronic pain and headache providers.
The opening session on Friday afternoon included talks and panel discussions around the relationship between payors and providers, patient disability issues and managing chronic pain the cognitively impaired patient.
Our keynote speaker, Dr. William Maixner kicked off Saturday morning with 2 talks around the advances in translational research and new methods of diagnosing and caring for the complex pain patient. Speakers throughout the rest of the weekend covered a range of topics from enhancing our understanding of the impact of the environment, opioid guidelines and abuse deterrent formulations, neuromodulation, biopsychosocial approaches, headache treatments, to the business side of practicing.
A particularly interesting highlight was a discussion about virtual reality (VR) and its use in pain patients. Many attendees tried out the VR gear available in the exhibit hall.
Trying out the VR equipment
We send a big “thank you” to the 30 vendors and grant supporters who helped make this meeting so successful! We now turn our attention to the 2018 meeting in Atlanta. “Balanced Approached to Acute and Chronic Pain” is shaping up nicely, so mark your calendars for September 21-23.