September 8th & 9th, 2018. Istanbul, Turkey
On behalf of the AMS Scientific Advisory Board (SAB), we were proud to organize the Scientific Program of the 5th Annual Meeting of America Medic & Science. Before we started to put together the scientific program, we have had a long discussion with the AMS management about what subjects would be the most interesting for the audience. We had several ideas, but at the end, based on the request of the AMS management, we highlighted three very important areas of human reproduction: implantation issues, embryo selection and supplementation in pregnancy or infertility, and we planned to invite the top scientific speakers for these areas. Finally, we could schedule several brilliant speakers and topics for the scientific program of the meeting. In attendance were the AMS team, AMS distributors from all over the globe along with esteemed doctors and guests. At the beginning of the scientific program, we had a very nice introduction by Moe Kaadan, the COO of AMS. He talked about the importance of changes and innovation in our life, and he briefly summarized the history of in vitro fertilization (IVF) and the importance of nutraceuticals in successful IVF treatment. The keynote lecture was held by Prof. Engin Oral, vice president of the Turkish Endometriosis & Adenomyosis Society. As he is a worldwide known expert of endometriosis, we were very honored to hear his talk about modern management of endometriosis. He gave us very detailed information about differential diagnosis, surgical and medical treatment options of endometriosis. The next speaker was Prof. Tom Fleming from the University of Southampton, UK. He is one of the key persons in the area of periconceptional medicine in the world, he was the director of the DOHaD Society, and he was the keynote speaker of the last ESHRE Conference. Prof. Fleming gave a very interesting talk about the influence of maternal diet on the embryo development and long-term health effects. Prof. Talal Abu Rjai, member of the AMS SAB and professor in natural product chemistry and analysis, gave a lecture about the role of nutraceuticals in infertility. His detailed, evidence-based talk went through the whole nutraceutical issue mentioning the importance of vitamins, macronutrients and antioxidants in our diet. Another AMS SAB member, Prof. Enrique Lledo Garcia, a well-known andrologist and urologist, presented the modern surgical options and supplementary adjuvant treatments of varicocele highlighting the importance of the male factor in creation of viable, healthy embryos. The first day was closed with a very active and successful round table session about ART models which was the first round table discussion in the history of AMS Meetings. On the second day, two lectures covered the embryo implantation issue. Dr. Jose Horcajadas from Spain, who is one of the key players in the group that developed the ER Map test, gave a very detailed and precise lecture regarding the issue of endometrium receptivity and it’s genetic, molecular and microbiological background. Dr. Martha Luna Rojas, member of the AMS SAB with an ample expertise in decreased ovarian reserve, recurrent pregnancy loss, In-Vitro Fertilization and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, approached this issue from a more clinical aspect. She talked about the challenge of recurrent implantation failure and the treatment options, and how add-on therapies can improve the implantation rate. Another topic of this day was embryo selection, which was represented by Dr. Nathan Treff’s talk. He is one of the leading scientists and top speakers in the field of preimplantation genetic testing these days. His lecture went through the whole issue of embryo biopsy, aneuploidy testing and mosaicism from the molecular biological and clinical point of view as well, and he presented his new results on screening of polygenic disorders. I myself was lucky enough to cover in my talk the diagnosis and surgical solutions of implantation failure caused by uterine malformations, and how we can achieve as high implantation rate as possible in clinics. At the end of the second day, we also made an open round table discussion with great interest related to Dr. Treff’s talk about reproductive genetics, importance of embryo selection and how to improve the outcome of IVF treatments. In conclusion, I think we have had a new kind of annual meeting with a new approach covering three important areas of infertility. I think we fulfilled all the requirement of AMS and the audience as well. We were able to close the Scientific Session of the 5th Annual Meeting of AMS in 2018 held in Istanbul, Turkey with a great success with top speakers, important lectures and questions from the very actively participating audience.