I have to say I was a little late to the hemodialysis session because I got lost going through McCormick Place. The place was huge. Here was a quick rundown of what I went through.
I walked from my apartment to McCormick Place, so I ended up entering near where the Hyatt Regency Hotel was (so I was west of the Lakeside Center). If you're heading to the conference from the Hyatt Regency Hotel, these pictures would make more sense.
Here's the "Grand Concourse". A huge "hallway" that connects all the buildings of McCormick Place together. Along the concourse I saw several other conferences going on, a Fedex Kinko's area, access to the food court, a Metra train station stop, and more. This area was huge and I couldn't believe all the services and little businesses found along it.
After walking for awhile I finally got to the bridge that connected the North Building to the Lakeside Center where the conference was.
After crossing the bridge you'll see this little area. I got lost because I didn't realize that registration was DOWNSTAIRS. So once you get to this area go one level down.
Ahhh yes. Here was the registration desk. This is where the lovely Frankie Hamme and Missi Mclean helped me out and got me checked in.
I got to the hemodialysis access session where Kelly Byrnes was in the middle of doing I believe a palmar arch test. She was doing the palmar arch test using duplex imaging as opposed to the CW Doppler or PPG version. One sonographer in the crowd also suggested trying to find the radial artery with the palm facing down (so the transducer was on top of the hand) and it worked as well!
After that Steve Talbot did a presentation on Flow Volume Measurements. It was a fascinating and funny presentation. He made a lot of jokes. If you see him ask him where the "Vascular Center" of the brain is. You would never guess where it's located anatomically.
After Steve's presentation, Dr. Dennis Bandyk from the University of South Florida gave a really great lecture on physiologic changes that occur after a fistula is created. Lots of really amazing information.
After Dr. Bandyk's lecture, Kelly continued the session by having actual models come to the front to get hands-on scanning demonstrations.
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Overall not bad for a first day. It was a lot of information just in a few hours and it wasn't even officially the first day of the conference.
Cheers,
Manny :)