President's Message

Muharrem Yazici, MD
SRS President 2020-2021

As the President of SRS, this is the last newsletter article I address to you. After a long summer, I hope these words find you healthy and happy.

I was hoping to write something else in this article, I would like to write something else. I wish we could leave the pandemic behind and have had an Annual Meeting in St. Louis with all of our friends and colleagues from around the world. While many were still able to join us in person, we will need to look forward to 2022 to see the full realization of this dream.

The majority of our members, particularly those from outside the United States, were unable to attend our Annual Meeting this year, despite their strong desire to do so. A significant number of US members were forced to adjust their plans at the last minute. Despite the setbacks, we were pleased to be able to hold our Annual Meeting, albeit with a smaller number of in-person attendees.

We consider it a success that we were able to make this year's Annual Meeting in hybrid format after two IMASTs and one Annual Meeting where we had to perform entirely virtually. The meeting was held as planned, with the same content and format. According to the St Louis time zone, it will run continuously from 8 a.m. until 6 p.m. The entire program was recorded and is available on the BrightSpace platform.

With our past newsletters, we kept you up to date on what we did throughout the year. In the year-end report, all of our committee and Task Force chairs will share their one-year activities with you in written and short video presentations. As you can see from these reports, the coronavirus was unable to stop SRS. Despite the fact that the pandemic has kept us from getting together, SRS members' excitement and productivity have not waned. It would certainly not be an exaggeration to say that last year was even was even more prolific than the previous ones. After reading these reports, I trust you will agree with me.

All of our educational and social activities, as well as our financial condition, have been negatively impacted by the pandemic. SRS saw a decline in income as a result of not being able to hold any meetings for the past two years, however, we were able to manage the process without any major issues thanks to our robust financial structure and wise judgments taken in past years. The ability to convene a meeting despite a limited capacity will be a sign of a return to the good old days, both morally and financially. We are optimistic that normalization will speed with IMAST next spring.

I hope that our new President, Chris Shaffrey, who will address you in the next newsletter, will write articles that are more uplifting. Thank you for your continuous support and confidence throughout the past year. I'll see you in good days.