he Scientific Advisory Committee selected 1,752 abstracts for presentation at the ASA 2006 Annual Meeting in Chicago. New this year, abstracts from all scientific and clinical subspecialty categories will be presented from Saturday through Wednesday morning. A total of 19 oral computer-slide-assisted presentation sessions, 30 moderated poster-discussion sessions and 56 poster sessions with strolling expert discussants will be offered at the meeting.

Oral presentations will consist of six abstracts per session with 10 minutes for oral computer slide-assisted presentations followed by five minutes of moderated audience questions. Poster-discussion sessions will consist of eight abstracts each and last 90 minutes. The first 30 minutes will be spent by attendees reviewing and discussing the posters with the authors. All attendees and presenters will then be seated, following which a moderated session will ensue with a short presentation by the presenting author followed by a brief moderated question-and-answer period for each abstract. Oral sessions and poster-discussion sessions will all be in rooms N139, N140, N230b and N426a at McCormick Place.

All other poster sessions will occur in Hall E at McCormick Place, where expert discussants will visit each poster to review the findings with the presenting author during the two-hour assigned time. Presenting authors must plan to stand by their poster in Hall E during the two-hour assigned viewing time to meet with any other attendees who wish to ask questions; however, the posters themselves will remain hanging for the entire day.

The Resident Research Forum will take place on Saturday, October 14, from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. in Hall E at McCormick Place. This special session showcases in one location the work of residents who are presenting authors, with individualized discussion occurring alongside each poster by an expert in the field. In this way, ASA wishes to foster continued scientific interest of the young investigators. The residents also will present their posters at their regularly scheduled scientific sessions.

Annual Meeting Subcommittees and Abstract Selection
All abstracts were submitted and graded electronically by the 17 scientific papers subcommittees. Subcommittee chairs are listed in the box below, but space does not permit the listing of all subcommittee members. Their names will be listed in the final Annual Meeting program. The Scientific Advisory Committee (formerly the Committee on Scientific Papers) sincerely appreciates the dedicated efforts of all subcommittee members, without which the evaluation and selection of the abstracts presented at the Annual Meeting would not be possible. We also commend Marathon Multimedia, which each year coordinates the electronic abstract submission and evaluation process and organizes the abstracts for publication.

The number of oral, poster-discussion and poster sessions was based on the available space and abstract review scores that suggested which abstracts should be presented and what information shared with Annual Meeting attendees. The accepted abstracts were then grouped into sessions by the subcommittee chairs. The final scientific papers schedule was determined by the scientific session chair and vice-chair. Efforts were made to avoid conflicts with other scheduled sessions on a given subject, but for some clinical specialties that are widely represented across the Annual Meeting schedule, it was not possible to avoid overlap with all other sessions on the same topic.

All abstracts will be printed on a CD-ROM that will be distributed with the September issue of Anesthesiology. Abstracts from the past five years also will be on the CD-ROM, and they will be indexed and searchable by author and topic. The abstracts will be available on the ASA and Anesthesiology Web sites as well. Kiosks in McCormick Place will be available for downloading and printing abstracts.

Special Scientific Symposia
The Journal Symposium, organized by the editors of Anesthesiology, will be presented on Tuesday, October 17, from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. in room E450a in McCormick Place. The symposium will include lectures and discussion of abstracts related to influences on perioperative cognitive function. It will be moderated by Michael M. Todd, M.D., and Mervyn Maze, M.B., Ch.B.

The Society for Obstetric Anesthesia and Perinatology/Anesthesiology special session will be presented on Monday, October 16, from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. in room E258 in McCormick Place. William R. Camann, M.D., James C. Eisenach, M.D., and Robert D’Angelo, M.D., will moderate the session. Six abstracts will be presented with a lively discussion expected.
The American Society of Critical Care Anesthesiologists/Anesthesiology special scientific abstract session will be held on Monday, October 16, in room E258. Scheduled from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m., eight specially chosen abstracts on cutting-edge topics related to critical care will be presented and discussed.

The Scientific Advisory Committee looks forward to your finding many interesting and new aspects of scientific and clinical knowledge relating to your practice or your scientific interests at the ASA 2006 Annual Meeting.

Patricia A. Kapur, M.D., is Professor, Department of Anesthesiology, David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California-Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California.