Submit your abstract for the  Multidisciplinary Head and Neck Cancers Symposium: Expanding Treatment Horizons, taking place February 27-29, 2020, at the Westin Kierland Resort and Spa in Scottsdale, Arizona.

This meeting focuses on the multidisciplinary management of all head and neck cancers, with the goal of bringing together radiation therapy, clinical oncology and surgical oncology to examine the latest clinical trial research and new treatment approaches.

Thank you for all who attended the 2019 AHNS Annual Meeting this past May in Austin, Texas.  This year we had over 680 head and neck surgeons, oncologists, physicians and scientists attend the meeting at the JW Marriott.  The 2019 Program Chairs, Neil D. Gross, MD, FACS, & Carole Fakhry, MD, MPH, along with Ehab Y. Hanna, MD, FACS, AHNS 2018-2019 President, put together an outstanding scientific program.

The meeting started off with 3 pre-meeting courses – an ACS exported Thyroid, Parathyroid, and Neck Ultrasound Course, the AHNS Thyroid and Parathyroid Surgery Course for Residents and Fellows, and the AHNS Transoral Robotic Training Didactic Course for Fellows.  During the two day Annual Meeting, keynotes included the John Conley Lecture: “Value Based Health Care: The Agenda for Head and Neck” by Michael Porter, PhD and the Hayes Martin Lecture: “Life Lessons from my Thirty-Seven Years as a Navy SEAL” by Admiral William McRaven.

This year the program used a more interactive format with multiple debates and case-based panel sessions with the addition of live audience response questions in many of the sessions. The Jatin P. Shah Symposium on “Remote Access versus Standard Thyroidectomy: Where is the Value and Who Defines It?” was presented by a panel of experts who highlighted the pros and cons of two remote access approaches versus a traditional “open” transcervical approach for thyroidectomy.  Finally, this year the AHNS had again a record breaking number of abstract submissions.  The top submissions were selected for the scientific program including 94 oral abstract presentations, 295 posters, and 10 quickshot presentations.

To view the final program and abstracts visit: https://www.ahns.info/meetings/past_meetings/.

Congratulations to the AHNS Award winners who were honored last month during our Annual Meeting

AHNS Myers’ Family Diversity Summer Travel Fellowship Award
2019 Awardee Ms. Ezinne Agwaramgbo, MS2
Institution: University of Miami, Miller School of Medicine

AHNS Myers’ Family Diversity Summer Travel Fellowship Award
2018 Awardee Mr. Frantzlee LaCrete, MS3
Institution: University of Nebraska

African Head and Neck Society on behalf of American Head and Neck Society Scholar Award
Anna Konney MD, FWACS, FGCS
Institution: Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH), Kumasi, Ghana, West Africa

Margaret F. Butler Outstanding Mentor of Women in Head and Neck Surgery Award #BeLikeButler
2019 Awardee: Marion E. Couch, MD, PhD, MBA, FACS

Best Prevention and Early Detection Paper Award
Alia Mowery, MS3
Entitled work: “Elevated Risk of Head and Neck Cancer in Patients with History of Hematologic Malignancy”
Institution: Oregon Health and Science University

Best Prevention and Early Detection Paper Award
Nicole Craker MD, MPH
Entitled work: “Chronic Opioid Use After Laryngeal Cancer Treatment”
Institution: University of Kentucky Medical Center

Best Resident Basic Science Paper Award
Cory Fulcher, MD
Entitled work: “The CDK4/6 inhibitor palbociclib demonstrates efficacy alone and in combination with radiation in HPV-negative head and neck squamous cell”
Institution: Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Randall Weber, MD Quality, Safety and Value Award 
Shaum Sridharan, MD (donated half of monetary prize amount to AHNS)
Entitled work: “Early Oral Tongue Squamous Cell Carcinoma with Histologically Benign Lymph Nodes: A Model Predicting Local Control and Vetting of the 8th edition of AJCC pT Stage”
Institution: University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC)

Robert Maxwell Byers Award
Marco A. Mascarella, MD
Entitled work: “Preoperative Risk Index for Patients Undergoing Head and Neck Cancer Surgery”
Institution: McGill University

Best Resident Clinical Paper Award
Andrew Larson, MD
Entitled work: “Beyond Depth of Invasion: Adverse Pathologic Tumor Features in Early Oral Tongue Squamous Cell Carcinoma”
Institution: University of California San Francisco

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. – Mark Twain

Head and Neck cancer surgeons know when “The Questions” are coming. A casual conversation eventually turns to “What do you do for a career?” The pleasant exchange is replaced with talk of disfigurement and life-threatening illness. The person’s brow furrows. “How can you deal with that day after day? Isn’t it depressing? Why didn’t you pick something happier for a career?”

These are legitimate questions. As a medical student many years ago, I enjoyed every rotation and wondered how I would ever narrow down my choices and pick a specialty. Eventually, I decided that I was most content in the operating room. Even when I knew I would become a surgeon, there were still dozens of trajectories which my career might have taken.

One day in 1980, as a 25-year-old senior medical student, I was in a departmental conference, listening to a visiting out-of-town cancer surgeon. He ran through his slide show, describing a procedure he had devised to restore voice for patients who had undergone removal of their voice boxes. It was a complex operation that involved the creation of tubes of lining tissues that shunted air from the trachea to the back of the throat that could then exit through the mouth, thus allowing the person to speak.

It was interesting, but at my level of training, I was confused by approach and the diagrams. I was years away from doing any type of surgery on my own. At some point during his talk, I probably checked my watch, wondering when the conference would be over.

Then, the visiting surgeon flipped the controls and adjusted the volume on a 16-mm movie projector. The light flickered as the film moved past the bulb. There, on the screen, was a man who had undergone a total removal of his voice box. The surgeon asked him a question and the patient responded by holding a vibrating device against his neck to create an artificial, machine-like sound that he shaped into words. He was understandable, but his voice sounded synthetic.

The next scene showed the same patient after he had undergone the voice-restoring procedure. This time, he answered questions by bringing his hand up to his neck and covering his stoma to redirect air from his lungs through the shunt and into his throat. He was able to talk! The sound was natural and fluent. I was enthralled by his ability to speak and by his big smile at the end of the movie. Once the presentation was complete, the senior surgeons asked technical questions about the operation and whether it might cause more problems than it solved. I, on the other hand, was amazed. All I could think was, “I want to do something like that!”

Although the procedure described by the visiting surgeon never caught on (there are much simpler techniques today), that movie steered me toward a career devoted to patients with head and neck cancer. I can trace the rest of my life to that day.  A few weeks later, I was humbled when a cancer patient’s family included me in their circle while making difficult end-of-life decisions. That sealed it.

I have loved my work even on the many days I when I have found it overwhelming. When someone asks me my story, I tell them about that lecture. I describe the movie and the man’s huge grin. Over the decades, I have been privileged to see similar grins on my own patients. It has, indeed, all been worthwhile.

A previous version of this essay appeared in Dr. Campbell’s blog, Reflections in a Head Mirror (www.froedtert.com/reflections)