The 2020 Midwest Anesthesia Residents Conference (MARC), scheduled for the end of April, fell victim, like virtually every other medical conference, to the COVID-19 pandemic. But a group of academic medical centers, who are already collaborating on a quality and safety event for residents to be held in the fall, decided to try creating an online version of MARC.

The Virtual Anesthesia Residents Conference (VARC), hosted by the University of Minnesota, took place May 30 with nearly 50 residents from six institutions: Minnesota, Medical College of Wisconsin, Northwestern University, University of Iowa, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and University of Utah.

The event was organized in less than a month and involved countless staff hours to pull off, in the midst of not just the pandemic but sometimes-violent demonstrations in multiple cities across the country, including Minneapolis.

Twelve Iowa residents presented case studies at VARC, and several faculty served as judges. Because of the short lead time and clinical responsibilities, additional faculty stepped up to cover resident shifts so they could participate in VARC.

“I’m so grateful to the faculty who gave up their own personal or non-clinical time to enable our residents to make their presentations,” says Michelle Parra, MD, residency program director at Iowa. “It demonstrates the faculty’s commitment to our educational mission, especially in such unusual circumstances.”

The Minnesota Society of Anesthesiologists, the Wisconsin Society of Anesthesiologists, and the Utah Society of Anesthesiologists also provided financial support for awards and door prizes during the virtual awards ceremony. Iowa residents captured seven awards for their presentations.

Below are the Iowa residents who participated in VARC (faculty mentors are in parentheses), and awards they won:

Third place, Critical Care: Jerrod Bang, MD, CA-2 (Archit Sharma, MBBS): Close Call with Coronary Involvement in Type A Aortic Dissection: TEE to the Rescue

Second place, Regional: Andrew Hayden, MD, CA-1 (Tejinder Swaran Singh, MBBS, FRCA): Regional Anesthesia in a Patient with Multiple Sclerosis

Jordan Hill, MD, CA-3 (Sapna Ravindranath, MBBS): Intraoperative Amniotic Fluid Embolism with Subsequent Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation and Intracardiac Thrombus

Aparna Jindal, MBBS, CA-1 (Tyrone Whitter, MD, PhD): Negative Pressure Pulmonary Edema

Johnny Kim, MD, Intern (Lovkesh Arora, MBBS, MD): Pancreatitis Induced Sepsis — Is Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation a Good Option?

Karl Loth, MD, CA-3 (Satoshi Hanada, MD): Unstable Atrial Fibrillation with a Malpositioned Central Catheter

Second place, Critical Care: Cody Petersen, MD, Intern (Lovkesh Arora, MBBS), MD: Coronary Artery Bypass Graft or Cesarean Section: Which To Do First?

Jeffrey Peterson, MD, Intern (Archit Sharma, MBBS): Retroperitoneal Hemorrhage in a Patient Post Vascular Intervention

First place, Cardiovascular: Breethaa Selvamani, MBBS, CA-1 (Yasser El-Hattab, MBChB, MSc): Acute STEMI in the PACU Requiring Percutaneous Coronary Intervention in a Cardiac Patient after Non-cardiac Surgery

First place, Critical Care: Andrew Wheeler, MD, Intern (Lovkesh Arora, MBBS): Multi-Lobar Spontaneous Pulmonary Torsion

Third place, Pain: Brad Wheeler, DO, CA-1 (Tejinder Swaran Singh, MBBS, FRCA): Vascular Trigeminal Neuralgia

Third place, Critical Care: Grant Young, MD, Intern (Lovkesh Arora, MBBS): Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy in the Setting of Septic Shock and Cardiac Arrest