SOMETHING NEW IS COMING IN MAY 2027

PRACTICAL. CASE-BASED. BUILT FOR THE TEAM.
Practical Surgery Summit Logo Dark.png

MAY 18 – 21, 2027
PHOENIX, ARIZONA
Hyatt Regency Phoenix

Surgery Isn’t Practiced in a Lecture Hall.

It’s practiced in the trauma bay. The emergency department. The operating room. The ICU.
It’s where incomplete information, limited time, and critically ill patients demand sound judgment and decisive action.


The AAST Practical Surgery Summit was created for surgeons and Advanced Practice Providers who want more than lectures. This meeting delivers practical education grounded in experiences like sharing techniques, decision-making, and clinical judgment that experienced surgeons rely on every day but that are rarely found in textbooks.

This is where experts explain not only what they do, but why they do it.

Registration Opens November 2, 2026

 

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.

Explore Four Days of Practical Education

Day 1 | Three Focused Tracks
Track A:
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 B:
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:
Coming Soon
Day 2 | Emergency General Surgery

Master the difficult decisions that define emergency general surgery.

Highlights include:

  • Complicated biliary disease
  • Diverticulitis
  • Small bowel obstruction
  • Mesh in contaminated fields
  • The hostile abdomen
  • Frail surgical patients
  • Controversial topics in EGS

Learn how experienced surgeons approach operations that don’t go according to plan.

Day 3 | Trauma

Refine your management of critically injured patients through practical, evidence-informed education.

Highlights include:

  • Damage control surgery
  • Cardiac injury
  • Liver trauma
  • Vascular injury
  • Rib fractures
  • Traumatic brain injury
  • Contemporary trauma controversies

Gain practical approaches that translate directly to trauma call.

 

Day 4 | Surgical Critical Care

Strengthen your ICU decision-making with rapid, case-based reviews of today’s most challenging critical care topics.

Highlights include:

  • Shock and resuscitation
  • Mechanical ventilation
  • Sepsis
  • ECMO and mechanical support
  • Point-of-care ultrasound
  • Consensus guidelines
  • Failure to Rescue in the ICU
  • Ethics and palliative care

Leave with practical frameworks you can implement immediately.