ESA 2012 Hamburg
Newsletter 2011
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EUROPEAN SURGICAL ASSOCIATION
ESA NEWSLETTER
August 2011
Dear ESA Member, Dear Colleague,
It is my great pleasure to write for the first time as new secretary, the traditional « ESA Newsletter » to inform each of you recent events and future activities of our society. The past months were marked by an outstanding meeting in Helsinki, organized by Professor Krister Höckerstedt, and by the election of new members and of new ESA office bearers.
1) 18th Annual ESA Meeting, The Palace Grand Conference Room, Helsinki, Finland, May 20th -21st, 2011
This 18th ESA meeting met altogether, 139 participants, (new record for an ESA Congress: 132 of them were members and 7 honorary members). They attended the 36 communications of the congress in the attractive city of Helsinki. Krister Höckerstedt, has ordered in addition to the perfect organization and the support of 9 sponsors, a sunny weather. The social events with the welcome reception at the Town Hall and the Gala Dinner in the beautiful hotel Kämp were greatly appreciated. For this Helsinki meeting, 115 abstracts were submitted to Jean-François Gigot, chair of the program committee. Based on the new internal rules, a maximum of 2 abstracts per center or team could be selected. 38 abstracts were selected for presentation with a high standard of quality (33% acceptance rate). All abstracts were anonimously scored by 9 reviewers. Two selected presentations were cancelled by the authors (1 for previous submission of the paper to a journal, 1 for decision of the authors to complement the data before presentation). Each paper was followed by an animated discussion launched by invited discussants and experts along with spontaneous comments from members. The BJS-Lecture was delivered by Professor Joseph Vacanti from Massachusetts General Hospital, USA, about « Update on Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medecine ». This outstanding lecture will be published, as the previous years, in the BJS in the form of a leading article.
The Editorial Board, chaired by Ronan O’Connell, has selected 19 papers to be published in the 2011 November issue of Annals of Surgery along with the presidential address from Raimund Margreither entitled « To be or not to be a general surgeon », a conference which was very elegantly presented, documented and highly appreciated by the ESA members.
2) New ESA Members
• Honorary Members
Professor Eduardo de Santibanes, from Argentina, Professor Aki Masa Nakao from Japan, Professor Mikaelsen from USA, Professor Joseph Vacanti from USA were elected as new Honorary Members. We are very proud to welcome these surgical leaders to our association.
• New members
The following new members were elected and became active members :
Donato Altomare (Italy), Karim Boubdjema (France), Nagy Habib (United Kingdom), Helena Isoniemi (Finland), Mario Lachat (Switzerland), Pal-Dag Line (Norway), Jukka Pekka Mecklin (Finland), Dion Gregory Morton (United Kingdom), Antonio Daniele Pinna (Italy), François-René Pruvot (France), Miroslav Riska (Czech Republic), Utz Settmacher (Germany) and Ulrich Stockle, (Germany).
The association currently counts 271 members : 34 honorary and 237 ordinary members.
3) New administrative office
An administrative office has been proposed by Pierre-Alain Clavien to help and professionalize the routine management of the ESA. This new strategy has been approved by the council of the ESA as a well as the General Assembly. This new administrative office, led by Victor Bertschi and Chris Storz located in Basel, Switzerland, will be in charge of the membership, of collection of annual fees, of the sponsoring and of the website.
4) New ESA office bearers
The current officers of the ESA are:
- Ermanno Ancona, Padova, Italy: President
- Pierre-A. Clavien, Zurich Switzerland: President-Elect
- Raimund Margreiter, Innsbruck, Austria: Past-President
- René Adam, Villejuif, France: Secretary
- Jan-Baptist Van Lanschot, Rotterdam, the Netherlands: Treasurer
- Ronan O’Connell, Dublin, Ireland: Chair of the Editorial Board
- Jean-François Gigot, Brussels, Belgium: Chair of the Program Committee
- Henri Bismuth, Villejuif, France: Chair of the Membership Committee
Councilors: Jakob Izbicki, Hamburg, Marek Krawczyk, Warsaw, Mario Morino, Torino Neil Mortensen, Oxford and Bruno Walther, Lunds.
Editorial Board: Ronan O’Connell, Dublin (Editor in Chief), Gordon Carlson, Salford and Helmut Friess, Munich (Associate Editors), Marco Braga, Hein Gooszen, Jakob Izbicki, Mauri Lepäntalo, John Monson, Karl-Göran Tranberg, and Ermanno Ancona (President), Jean-François Gigot (Chair of the Program Committee) and René Adam (Secretary).
Program Committee: Jean-François Gigot, Brussels (Chair), Arnulf Hölscher, Mauri Lepäntalo, Bertrand Millat, Mario Morino, Norbert Senninger, and Ermanno Ancona (President), Ronan O’Connell (Chair of the Editorial board), René Adam (Secretary).
Advisory Membership Committee: Henri Bismuth, Villejuif (Chair), Joan Figueras, Wolf Bechstein, Mauri Lepäntalo, Jan Lerut, Gilles Mentha, José Mendes de Almeida, John Neoptolemos, René Adam (Secretary).
Nominating Committee: includes the past 5 presidents with Raimund Margreiter who as immediate past-president acts as Chair, Gerald O’Sullivan, Daniel Jaeck, Peter Neuhaus, and Krister Höckerstedt.
5) ESA-Membership Fee
There is no change in the fee for active ESA members and for senior members which will remain at 75€. According to the by-laws, members who do not honor their annual fee or failed to attend 3 meetings in a row for 3 consecutive years will be discussed at the winter council meeting and their membership may be denied.
6) Upcoming 19th ESA-Meeting in Hamburg
The next ESA-meeting will take place from May 4th to 5th, 2012 in Hamburg, Germany. The meeting is hosted by Jacob Izbicki, who proposed all the attractive aspects of Hambourg with low registration fee for the participants. The finalized organization of the Scientific and Social event will be given at the next Winter Board meeting in Paris on December, 10th.
7) Call for Abstracts for the 19th ESA-Meeting in Hamburg
As usual, the goal is to attract a large range and number of quality papers for the meeting in Hamburg. A good balance of content in surgical science and the specialties can only be achieved by the submission of quality abstracts. Case report and simple follow-up of previously published studies will not be considered. Abstracts should be submitted via the ESA-Website http://www.eurosurgical.info (section Meeting 2012, Abstracts). Login and password are “esa2011”. The deadline for the abstract submission is October 31st, 2011. As a routine policy, the evaluation will be performed in a complete blinded manner by each of the 9 members of the program committee chaired by Prof. Jean-François Gigot. The corresponding authors will be notified regarding acceptance or rejection of their abstracts by the end of November 2011. Authors of accepted abstracts for presentation in Hamburg will be requested to submit a full paper by January 31st, 2012 to Professor Ronan O’Connell, Chair of the Editorial Board. The authors will be invited to present their papers in Hamburg, only if they submit a full paper within by the end of January.
8) Call for New Members
The ESA always welcomes new members of high academic standards. Each ESA member can propose new members to Professor Henri Bismuth (henri.bismuth@pbr.aphp.fr), Chair of the Membership Committee. All submissions must be sent to the Chair of the Membership Committee before October 23rd, 2011. Applications after this deadline will not be considered for this year. The application should include one sponsoring member accompanied by a supporting letter from two co-sponsors. Only applications of individuals with highly credible academic records and demonstrated leadership in surgery will be considered. The candidates will be discussed in the Winter Meeting of the council. Further information is available on our website.
9) ASA/ESA Meeting
As initiated last year, members of the American Surgical Association (ASA) and European Surgical Association (ESA) will have the possibility to attend each others’ annual meetings. While members of one society may not submit abstracts to the other society, the agreement authorizes full participation during the meeting. The next ASA Annual Meeting is scheduled in April 26-28, 2012 in San Francisco. ESA-members can register as an Invited Non-Member Physician via the ASA (www.americansurgical.info). The meeting section will open in late autumn.
10) Future ESA-Meetings
In 2012 the 19th ESA meeting will be held in Hamburg, Germany, from Friday, May 4th until Saturday, May 5th, 2012 . The ESA 20th anniversary will take place in 2013 in Paris hosted by Henri Bismuth. A very special program is expected for this jubilee.
Many thanks to each member for his continuing support and valuable input to the European Surgical Association.
With my best wishes,
René Adam
General Secretary