CHEST Ships Up to Boston for 90th Annual Meeting

Next week, clinicians and investigators will head to Boston, Massachusetts, for the 90th annual CHEST Meeting to explore current chest medicine challenges and anticipate future developments in the field.

The meeting appeals to experts from all areas of chest medicine, featuring over 300 educational sessions organized into 5 tracks: health equity, honor lectures, trainee focus, clinician educator, and advanced practice provider (APP) recommendations.¹ The sessions cover various topics, including therapeutics for advanced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), new guidelines on biologics for severe asthma, and artificial intelligence (AI) in health care and medical education.

Experts will travel to Boston, Massachusetts, next week to discuss hot topics in chest medicine. | Image Credit: SeanPavonePhoto - stock.adobe.com

In particular, AI use will be explored during the session “Experts vs AI Challenge: Diagnosing and Managing Nontuberculosis Mycobacterial Lung Disease (NTM-LD),” which will examine the accuracy of a chatbot in responding to specific NTM-LD scenarios and common practice questions. Conversely, the session “Advances in Epidemiology, Environmental Influences, and Artificial Intelligence in Pulmonary Medicine” will discuss AI use in chest medicine more broadly.

Also, air pollution and climate change remain hot topics as they will be explored by keynote speaker Vanessa Kerry, MD, MSc, during her address, “The Climate and Health Pandemic.”² Kerry is the director of Global and Climate Health Policy in the Department of Environmental Health at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. These topics will also be explored during numerous sessions, like “All About Air Pollution: Airways, Alveoli, AQI, and Air Cleaning,” and “Principles of Heat Stroke: Management of Critically Ill Hot Patients as the Climate Changes.”¹

The organizers also brought back the pro-con debates, scheduling several throughout the meeting that touch on current issues in chest medicine, including controversies in COPD and interstitial lung disease (ILD). However, attendees should build time into their schedules to explore the hundreds of posters on various chest medicine topics in the exhibit hall.

In an interview with The American Journal of Managed Care^®, Parth Rali, MD, associate professor at Temple Lung Center and speaker at CHEST 2024, shared what he is looking forward to most at this year’s meeting.

“CHEST is the go-to conference for physicians like me who are interested in pulmonary vascular disease,” he said. “CHEST envisions our disease as a spectrum, starting with pulmonary embolism and then advancing to pulmonary hypertension or different vascular diseases. "There are a lot of sessions on the spectrum, so I’m super excited for those, looking at the full spectrum journey and the essential topic of pulmonary vascular disease in general.”

A special highlight of this year's meeting is the recognition of the “Black Angels,” a group of Black nurses at Sea View Hospital in New York City who helped cure tuberculosis.³ CHEST will be awarding them an Honorary Fellow of the American College of Chest Physicians designation, which Virginia Allen, one of the last surviving Black Angels, will accept on the group’s behalf.

In her recent book, The Black Angels: The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis, researcher Maria Smilios highlights how isoniazid, one of the first and most successful tuberculosis treatments pioneered by Edward Robitzek, MD, in 1951, would not have been possible without these women. These nurses cared for highly contagious patients with tuberculosis when no one else would, all while enduring racial discrimination.

This story especially holds significance for CHEST since Robitzek was a member. Also, Murray Kornfeld, the founder of the American College of Chest Physicians and the CHEST journal, had tuberculosis and aimed to advance education and treatment of the disease.

“This long-overdue recognition is a testament to the profound impact that all the members of this esteemed group have made within the chest medicine community and for public health,” Jack Buckley, MD, MPH, CHEST president, said in a press release.⁴ “...By bestowing this honor to the Black Angels, we celebrate not only their individual and collective accomplishments but also acknowledge the integral role of the care team in fostering a more equitable health care system.”

References

1. CHEST annual meeting. CHEST. Accessed October 2, 2024. https://www.chestnet.org/learning-and-events/events/chest-annual-meeting
2. Expert in global health policy to discuss challenges of climate change in keynote address. CHEST Daily News. September 20, 2024. Accessed October 3, 2024. https://chestdailynews.chestnet.org/expert-in-global-health-policy-to-discuss-challenges-of-climate-change-in-keynote-address/
3. CHEST 2024 to celebrate legacy of “Black Angels” who helped cure TB. CHEST Daily News. August 28, 2024. Accessed October 3, 2024. https://chestdailynews.chestnet.org/chest-2024-to-celebrate-legacy-of-black-angels-who-helped-cure-tb/
4. CHEST recognizes contributions of the Black Angels with honorary FCCP designation. News release. CHEST; September 30, 2024.