It is a great pleasure to welcome you to the 50th Middle East Medical Assembly (MEMA) to be held May 2nd to 4th at the American University of Beirut. MEMA began in the 1950s and continues to this day to be a leading conference in Lebanon and the region. MEMA’s theme for this year is “The Perioperative Multidisciplinary Care of the High-Risk Surgical Patient: Stepping outside the Comfort Zone”. The scientific committee has put together a very rich program that should be attractive to most disciplines. The topics covered include cardiac risk assessment and scoring systems, perioperative infections and antimicrobial management, renal risk reduction,  perioperative endocrine dilemmas, ECMO, operating rooms crisis management and anesthesia dilemmas, frailty, high risk surgical procedures in neurosurgery, bariatric surgery, hepato-biliary surgery, cardiac and thoracic surgery, vascular surgery, trauma, urology, plastic, and orthopedic surgery along with challenging dilemmas in caring for the pediatric patient and advances in intra and postoperative monitoring. These exciting topics will be covered by a plethora of international and national renowned speakers from the US, Europe and the region. The program is supplemented by several hands-on workshops related to point of care ultrasounds, crisis resource management, cardiac echocardiography, patient blood management and ECMO.

Marie Aouad Maroun, MD
MEMA Scientific Chair
Professor & Chairperson
Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Management
American University of Beirut Medical Center