HFSA Cancels Annual Meeting Due to Looming Hurricane

Threatening weather from Hurricane Helene has forced the Heart Failure Society of America (HFSA) to cancel its annual scientific meeting, which was scheduled to begin in Atlanta, GA, tomorrow.

In making the announcement, the HFSA board of directors cited concern for the safety of attendees, staff, exhibitors, and employees who work at the hotels and the congress center. Ultimately, the board said they believe the cancellation is “the most responsible course of action,” in light of the declaration of a state of emergency by Georgia’s governor.

For the time being, HFSA says it is “discussing potential virtual options to deliver the incredible educational program that has been developed for this year’s meeting to attendees at a later date.”

To TCTMD, HFSA President James Fang, MD (University of Utah School of Medicine, Salt Lake City), said the board members are sorting through a variety of logistical considerations to figure out how to take as much of the content virtual as possible on such short notice.

“Obviously we are as disappointed as everybody that the highlight of our year had to be postponed,” Fang said. “The safety of everybody is our first and foremost concern. There's so many people on the ground in Atlanta . . . and we just didn't think it was reasonable to put them in harm's way.”

Since the announcement, Fang said he has been making calls to many of those people who were in the process of final preparations for the meeting, “and to no surprise, they're all still working.”

As of Thursday morning, Helene is a Category 2 hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico with wind speeds over 100 miles per hour, according to the National Weather Service. As it heads toward the United States, predictions are for the storm to make landfall tonight just south of Tallahassee, FL, and travel upward through Georgia, with Atlanta anticipated to be in the direct path.

This is the first cancellation of a major cardiology meeting since 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic forced most professional societies to call off their plans, beginning with the American College of Cardiology (ACC) that spring.

In the wake of the announcement, this year’s program chair Mitchell Psotka, MD, PhD (Inova Heart and Vascular Institute, Falls Church, VA), took to X to acknowledge all the planning that had been done for the meeting and to “thank all of our contributors who had volunteered their time and energies this year, including especially those who had agreed to teach and present their new science, all of the committee chairs and members, and of course, the society staff!”

Fang added that those who work in the field of HF are nothing if not resilient.

“There were just so many people to thank who have spent hundreds of hours over the course of the entire year to put this meeting together,” he said. “We're a resilient community. We're going to get the content out to the public somehow and I think people will be quite impressed.”