After two years of cancelled meetings due to COVID-19, the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medicine Society (UHMS) is finally able to continue its traditional on-site scientific annual meeting, merging our meeting with the Association for Aerospace Medicine (AsMA) in May 2022 . Parts of the meeting focused on two new potential indications for hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBO2).

This is the second joint meeting in UHMS history with AsMA, and it underscores the close relationship we have had since our organization at the 1966 AsMA meeting in Las Vegas with 6 individual members - 5 medical Ph.D. and 1 Ph.D. - make up the concept of the Undersea Medical Society (UMS). On April 10, 1967, the official charter was approved in Washington, D.C. Originally, the UMS was organized under the umbrella of the Aviation Medical Association, as a sub-association, the UMS initially had 90 members. When we changed the name to the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medicine Society (UHMS) in 1986, it was already a completely separate society. Our first joint scientific annual meeting with AsMA was in Seattle in 1998, 31 years after its inception, and now 24 years later, we have our second joint meeting. However, judging from the comments from this year's very successful conference, the overwhelming consensus is that we should continue to have joint conferences every 5-10 years. We are already planning for the next joint meeting in 2025.

Both associations actively participated in the conference and provided various topics of mutual interest. UHMS offers two pre-sessional courses, one for the diving medical community related to the Operational Resilience and Cognitive Awareness (ORCA) program, and the other for the practical clinical application of wound care for hyperbaric oxygen providers. Keynote speakers include the AsMA Bauer Lecture on issues in the history of U.S. aerospace medicine by Michael A. Berry, MD, followed by the UHMS Kindwall Lecture on decision-making in hyperbaric oxygen therapy for brain injury, by Lindell K. Weaver, MD. The AsMA Armstrong Lecture was given by Melchor Antunano, MD, on the medical and human factors challenges of new aerospace transportation systems, and the UHMS Lambertsen Memorial Lecture was given by Robert W. Sanders, MD, on the NASA Neutral Buoyancy Experiment Room for subsea and hyperbaric medical support.

One of the highlights for everyone, however, was seeing teams of researchers from all aerospace, subsea and hyperbaric medical research programs combine their accumulated knowledge base to compete in a very competitive, boisterous Jeopardy!-style game .

After the annual committee meeting, I can report on several important highlights. First, in response to the increasing number of members turning to non-hospital independent hyperbaric clinics, we established a new UHMS committee called the Committee on Office Hyperbaric Medicine (COBHM), chaired by Alan Katz, MD. Anyone wishing to serve on this committee or with questions or concerns can contact him or anyone on the Executive Committee directly.

The Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Committee also reviewed new evidence for two possible new indications for HBO2 in inflammatory bowel disease and traumatic brain injury, and their report will be published in the next edition of the Hyperbaric Oxygen Indications Handbook. Stay tuned for news about these possible changes.

Finally, at the end of the meeting, I passed the mallet as the outgoing chair to Dr. Pete Witucki, the new chair of UHMS. Other newly elected Board members include: Owen O'Neill, MD, as Chair-Elect; Constantino Balestra, MSc, PhD, as Vice-Chair; and Helen Gelly, MD, as Treasurer. We welcome Bruce Derrick, MD, and Brian Keuski, MD, to the general board, Julio Garcia, RN, as deputy nurse representative, and Elizabeth Smykowski, RN, as deputy nurse representative.

Dr. Robbins is past president of the Subsea and Hyperbaric Medicine Society. He is the Senior Medical Director of Hyperbaric Oxygen and Wound Care Services at Intermountain Healthcare in the Rocky Mountain Region.