One surefire measure of the enthusiasm for this year's American College of Chest Physicians (CHEST) annual meeting is that members of the program committee were swamped by high-quality scientific abstracts, far too many to be crammed into just a few days.
"This was a record-breaking year for submissions, with almost 1500 original investigations, and almost 4000 submissions if you include case reports and so forth," said Guy W. Soo Hoo, MD, chair of the CHEST 2023 Scientific Presentations and Awards committee, and chief of pulmonary, critical care, and sleep medicine at VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare in California.
Of course, it doesn't hurt that those whose abstracts were accepted will get to present their findings at the open-air Hawaii Convention Center, just a few blocks from the sun-washed beaches of southern Honolulu.
The theme of CHEST 2023, which starts Sunday and runs through October 11, is "Grow, Connect, and Be Inspired," and program planners have spent countless hours to bring those promises to fruition.
Although there were initial concerns about whether it would be appropriate to hold the meeting in light of the recent devastating wildfires on the island of Maui and the strains on the local community, "information from local authorities [indicates] that Hawaii, Maui included, is in need of economic support — including tourism — to rebuild and support local residents.
