In August, current and former members of the University of Sydney Endocrine Surgery Unit (USESU) reunited in Krakow, Poland for the biannual meeting of the International Association of Endocrine Surgeons 
(IAES) as part of the 48th International Society of Surgery World Congress for Surgery. The IAES is dedicated to understanding the medical and non-medical challenges faced by people with diseases of the thyroid, parathyroid, adrenal glands and the endocrine pancreas and is the premier professional association for Endocrine Surgery.
The IAES is always a special meeting for the Unit due to attendance of many former fellows and as two of our former Unit heads Tom Reeve and Leigh Delbridge have served as IAES President.
This meeting was especially memorable due to a number of achievements and presentations from former and current members of the Unit. The World Congress started with the Martin Allgower Keynote Lecture by Hisham Abdullah, Director General of Health, Malaysia (USESU RACS Fellow 1999) on ‘Difficult Thyroid Surgery: Primum Non Nocere’ who presented a masterclass on operative techniques in different resource environments.
Other invited talks included Peter Stalberg (TS Reeve Fellow 2005-06, Sweden) who gave the Invited IAES State-of-the-Art Lecture on the management of neuroendocrine cancers and was poignantly introduced by our current head of USESU Stan Sidhu.
Stan Sidhu featured on the second day of IAES by presenting over a decade of his labs work in improving understanding of thyroid, pheochromocytoma and adrenal cancer in the IAES Basic Science Updates in Endocrine Surgical Diseases session with his talk on ‘Key miRNA Therapeutic Targets in Endocrine Malignancy- From Benchtop to the Bedside’.
Other past fellows with invited talks included Cia Ihre-Lundgren (TS Reeve Fellow 2006-07, Sweden) who presented on Burnout in a panel session on The Surgeon’s Well-being and congratulations goes to Jan Zedenius (TS Reeve Fellow 1996-97, Sweden) who was elected as the President-elect of the IAES. The meeting also allowed for congratulations to Tom Fahey (TS Reeve Fellow 1992, USA) who was elected earlier this year as the President-elect of the American Association of Endocrine Surgeons.
The USESU had a number of original research presentations for projects supervised by Stan Sidhu and Mark Sywak which are listed below. Special congratulations go to Grace Kwok (Kolling Research Fellow 2015-18) who was awarded the Dr Michael Brauckhoff Award for best basic science/scientific poster presentation.
The meeting was capped with the TS Reeve Dinner which saw 18 former and current members of the unit reuniting at the historic Polish Miód Malina Restaurant to continue the tradition and amazing history of the unit in Endocrine Surgery.
We look forward to the next IAES in 2021 which will be held in Malaysia and convened by Hisham Abdullah.
Podium presentations:
- Marthe Chehade (Current Kolling Research Fellow, Australia) – ‘RECIPROCAL INTERPLAY OF MIR-497 AND MALAT1 PROMOTES TUMOURIGENESIS OF ADRENOCORTICAL CANCER’
- Pascal Jonker (Mary Jo Reeve Research Fellow 2017, Netherlands) – MULTIMODALITY TREATMENT IMPROVES LOCO-REGIONAL CONTROL AND OVERALL SURVIVAL IN PATIENTS WITH ANAPLASTIC THYROID CANCER’
Poster presentations:
- Grace Kwok (Kolling Research Fellow 2015-18, Australia) – ‘MIR-431 AS A CHEMOSENSITIZER IN ADRENOCORTICAL CARCINOMA VIA REVERSAL OF EPITHELIAL MESENCHYMAL TRANSITION’
- Pascal Jonker (Mary Jo Reeve Research Fellow 2017, Netherlands) – MET AS POTENTIAL TARGET FOR MOLECULAR FLUORESCENCE GUIDED SURGERY IN PAPILLARY THYROID CARCINOMA’, ‘MULTIMODALITY TREATMENT IMPROVES LOCO-REGIONAL CONTROL AND OVERALL SURVIVAL IN PATIENTS WITH ANAPLASTIC THYROID CANCER’ and ‘ADJUVANT RADIOTHERAPY REDUCES LOCAL RECURRENCE IN POORLY DIFFERENTIATED THYROID CARCINOMA’
- Russel Krawitz (ANZES Fellow 2018, Australia) – ‘THE CLINICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF HISTOLOGICALLY “LARGE NORMAL” PARATHYROID GLANDS IN PRIMARY HYPERPARATHYROIDISM’
- Aimee Di-Marco (TS Reeve Fellow 2018-19, United Kingdom) – ‘PARATHYROIDECTOMY DURING PREGNANCY IS SAFE AND LOCALISATION WITH ULTRASOUND IS ADEQUATE: A TALE OF TWO CITIES.’