Society of Perinatal Obstetricians

This has been an exciting year to be Program Chair for the SPO, and I very much appreciate the privilege allowed me. With the Board of Directors and Planning Committee, we have instituted a number of changes. These include increasing the total number of presentations, expanding the review process, awarding additional prizes all to be selected on site, and spotlighting research done by fellows in a separate Fellows' Plenary session. These changes were made largely in response to suggestions from various SPO members, and because this is the first SPO meeting without direct corporate sponsorship of specific prizes or social events. The meeting format change of having two rather than three concurrent oral sessions was dictated by space constraints in the Atlanta Hilton & Towers. Because we increased the numbers of posters by approximately 20 per session, extra effort was made to organize these presentations by index subjects within the broader category groupings. I would like to express my sincere appreciation to all of you who submitted your work for consideration for presentation. The 1995 SPO meeting has set another record for abstract submissions with 1047 which is 130 more than received last year. By increasing the number of presentations by 99, we were able to slightly improve the overall acceptance rate from 58% last year to 60% this year. Each abstract was blindly reviewed by four (rather than three as in the past) SPO members. The 120 highest scoring abstracts were then reviewed by four of ten secondary reviewers. There was a high degree of congruence between the primary and final reviewer lists with 80% of the oral presentations being scored in the top 76 of each list. A number of people require special recognition for their efforts in planning the 1995 SPO meeting. Without the support of Lauretta Stewart, Martha Foss-Johnson, Karylyn Bliss, Maureen Griffith and Kathy O'Sullivan the meeting would not have been possible. I would also