Why Attend?

Practical. Immediately Applicable.

Every session is designed to improve the care you deliver when you return home.

Learn:

• Operative techniques and technical pearls
• Clinical decision-making for difficult cases
• Damage control and bailout strategies
• Tips that improve efficiency and outcomes
• Lessons learned from real complications
• Emerging technologies and evidence that matter

Case-Based Learning

Forget long research presentations.

Experience:

• Interactive panel discussions
• “This Is How I Do It” sessions
• Operative videos
• Challenging case reviews
• Audience Q&A
• Honest discussions of controversies and complications

Because the best education happens when experienced surgeons share how they actually practice.

What Makes This Meeting Different?

Most conferences tell you what the evidence says.

The AAST Practical Surgery Summit teaches you how experienced surgeons use that evidence when the patient in front of them doesn’t fit the textbook.

This meeting is about:

✓ Practical judgment

✓ Real operations

✓ Difficult decisions

✓ Honest conversations

✓ Better patient care

Who Should Attend?

Built for the Entire Acute Care Surgery Team

Learn together. Solve problems together. Improve patient care together.

The summit intentionally brings together:

• Trauma Surgeons
• Acute Care Surgeons
• Emergency General Surgeons
• Surgical Critical Care Physicians
• Advanced Practice Providers
• Community Surgeons
• Fellows and Early Career Surgeons
• Members of multidisciplinary trauma teams

Whether you’re building a robotics program, taking trauma call, managing critically ill surgical patients, or refining your operative decision-making, you’ll leave with practical knowledge you can use on your very next shift.

Track I:
Robotics in Acute Care Surgery

Explore the expanding role of robotics across emergency general surgery, trauma, and elective acute care surgery practice.
Programming will include:

• Robotics in Emergency General Surgery: This Is How I Do It
• A keynote lunch lecture, Beyond TAPP and IPUM: Advanced Robotic Techniques, Tips, and Tricks for Abdominal Wall Hernias
• Robotic Applications in Trauma
• Practical guidance for building a successful acute care surgery robotics program
• Robotic approaches to abdominal wall, inguinofemoral, ventral, & incisional hernias
• Discussion of challenging and special-case applications

Track II:
APP Procedural and Didactic Course

Advanced Practice Providers are essential members of modern trauma and acute care surgery teams. This dedicated course combines procedural education, casebased learning, and interactive discussion to strengthen clinical confidence and teambased care.
Programming will include:

• Core procedural skills
• Acute care clinical scenarios
• Hands-on, case-based learning
• Ultrasound skills, including FAST, eFAST, IVC assessment, & point-of-care ultrasound
• An interactive discussion focused on the practical knowledge APPs need in daily practice

Track III:
Rib Fixation Hands-On Course

Participants in the Rib Fracture Fixation course will gain hands on experience with several techniques for rib fracture fixation. Using cadavers learners will be guided through dissection and preparation of fractures, internal and external plating techniques and when and how best to use those techniques. External plating will focus on proper plate fixation, appropriate screw length and plate length selection. Internal plating will focus on patient selection, incorporation of video-assisted thoracoscopic techniques to facilitate fication. By the end of the course the learner should feel comfortable with the technical elements of rib fracture fixation.