The Pittsburgh International Lung Conference, “Acute Lung Injury: New Mechanisms, Future Therapies, and the Translation to Clinical Care,” opened today with two international leaders responsible for the Berlin definition of Acute Respiratory Diffuse Syndrome (ARDS) re-examining their own findings.

Taylor Thompson, MD, of Massachusetts General Hospital and the Harvard Medical School, presented a lecture on the limitations of the definition reached in Berlin barely one year earlier. Then colleague Gordon Rubenfeld, MD, of the University of Toronto wondered what exactly scientists learned  about ARDS in the 35 years since the hallmark publication by Ashbaugh and Petty (Lancet 1967; 2[7511]:319–323)? Doctors Thompson and Rubenfeld were joined in a lively panel discussion, after their individual presentations, by Luciano Gattinoni, MD, of the University of Milan and the University of Pittsburgh’s Bryan McVerry, MD, assistant professor of medicine, Division of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care Medicine.

The two-day event is sponsored by UPMC, the Veterans Administration Pittsburgh Health System, the Vascular Medicine Institute (VMI) of the University of Pittsburgh, and various Pitt entites: the School of Medicine, the Center for Continuing Education in the Health Sciences, and the Division of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care Medicine.

Mark Gladwin, MD, VMI director and chief of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care Medicine, welcomed the nearly 300 attendees to the conference and gave way to Rama Mallampalli, MD, director of Pitt’s Acute Lung Injury Center of Excellence. Mallampalli introduced the goals of the conference, and turned over the stage to the spirited discussions about ARDS definition.

What followed were sessions on clinical management variables modifying outcome, in which Janet Lee, MD, of Pitt spoke on the role of blood-product support in lung injury.

In all, the conference attracted speakers like Thompson and Rubenfeld from Harvard and Toronto, but also experts from universities such as Johns Hopkins University, Washington, California-San Francisco, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Chicago, Illinois-Chicago, Louisiana State, North Dakota, Columbia, Wake Forest, Duke, Yale and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

Janet Lee, MD, and Bryan McVerry, MD, discuss their presentations below: