UPDATE MARCH 10, 2020

Dear SAGES Members and Meeting Attendees,

In light of the recent concerns about COVID-19 and the growing number of travel bans placed on both international and domestic surgeons, the SAGES executive leadership and Board of Governors has elected to delay the SAGES annual meeting until August 12-15, 2020.  This decision was NOT made lightly but was the only viable option in good conscience we could make to preserve the health and safety of our surgeon attendees and patients.

We are, however, still planning to hold our committee and board meetings as scheduled March 31 and April 1, but these meetings will be held virtually.  If you are on a SAGES committee or our Board, stay tuned for login details and please continue to hold those same time slots for your participation.

If you have an abstract accepted for presentation, we realize you have worked hard on your research and do not wish to delay disseminating the information for another four months. Therefore, we will keep the manuscript deadline of April 4 and allow submission to Surgical Endoscopy and publication prior to the 2020 annual meeting.

For the move to August, there will be some changes to the meeting.  Due to availability, the main event and sing-off will still be at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but it will now be a kickoff event on Tuesday, August 11.  This will be a great way to welcome back our colleagues in the spirit of SAGES.

The meeting hotels and convention center plans are otherwise unchanged.

Specific instructions will be sent to faculty, presenters, registrants and exhibitors later this week.  Please wait for those messages, as our staff have been inundated with individual calls and emails.  We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused our members and attendees and thank you for your understanding.

We think August in Cleveland will be phenomenal and we look forward to seeing all of you then.  Remember, SAGES Rocks!!!

Thank you for your continued support.

 

Aurora Pryor, MD, MBA, SAGES President

Matthew Goldblatt, MD, SAGES 2020 Program Chair

Leena Khaitan, MD, SAGES 2020 Program Chair

Sallie Matthews, Executive Director

 

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Original Memo: March 4, 2020

SAGES leadership and staff continue to monitor the evolving COVID-19 situation as updated by the CDC daily, in conjunction with the City of Cleveland and Huntington Convention Center, the location of SAGES 2020 Annual Meeting.  The health, safety and well-being of our members and meeting attendees is our top priority.  The SAGES meeting is ON, and we continue to have strong attendee registration.  Please continue to plan to join us as SAGES rocks Cleveland!

• If an attendee has a travel restriction prohibiting the trip to Cleveland, we will issue a full refund.
• If an attendee makes a personal decision to cancel out of concern, the existing cancellation refund (registration amount minus $100 processing fees) policy will apply.