August 22th, 2005

LETTER FROM THE INTERNET EDITOR
August 2005

Dear colleagues and friends:

A new homepage has been designed for www.wfns.org in the hope that it is better organized and user friendly. Communicational data is placed on the left, Educational information on the right, whilst the Central Section outlines a few of the multiple activities of the WFNS. It also includes links to ease up the downlownding of the abstracts from the exceptional World Congress of Neurosurgery in Marrakech. The whole website is almost completely automatized.

The Basic Set of Neurosurgical Instruments keeps being provided to many Neurosurgical Services in the developing world, thanks to the iniciative of Prof.Samii and the sponsorship of Aesculap.

The "Who is Who" in World Neurosurgery www.wfns.net with Advanced, Intermediate and Basic Subscriptions has grown a lot and includes, as you can see, surprisingly enriching websites, useful to all of us.

The 10 minute Self - Assessment Course held on Fridays which, last year, had 900 students from 31 countries continues this year. We formally invite each one of you to send a few questions (in English), to be included quoting your name and E-mail. Your reply would be most welcome and useful to our readers. Due to the type of learning platform used, questions can only be automatically classified when made to be answered by true or false.

The "How do I do it" Section has now 11 teaching videos from different centers of the five continents, including clearly explained newly developed minimally invasive techniques.Yours are most welcomed.

Reviews of Neurosurgery, Books, Training Centers and many other sections continue to be updated and welcome your comments and suggestions.

The Journal Section provides over 1400 journals with periodic updates of the links to each one of them.

The Subspecialties Section keeps developing continuously and is including areas from newly appointed Associate Editors such us Endovascular, Neuroendoscopy, Critical Care, Neurotraumatology, Biotechnology and Minimally Invasive, etc.

We wish to invite at least one Associate Editor from each continent to these Sections as well as to many other missing Sections. Please let me know of your interest in contributing to develop your area of expertise.

New Sections have been opened on the communicational side of the homepage, such as Important News, News from the Secretary, News from the Central Office, whose authorities deserve constant credit for the supervision and updating of massive information, all designed to ease up the communication and brotherhood of all members of the WFNS.

Information about the Interim Meeting in Nagoya (2007) and the World Meeting in Boston (August 23 - 28, 2009) is already being provided.

This year we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the WFNS, by giving each one of the attendants at the Marrakech Congress a CD of the second edition of the "History of WFNS" produced by Prof. Dr. H. August van Alphen and kindly sponsored by Micromar.

For those of you who could not attend, the whole book is available in the Page of the Historian on the website thanks to the generosity of Professor H. August van Alphen.

There are many new Sections in the process of development. One of the most ambitious is the Encyclopedia, an initiative of Prof. M. Dujovny, which has been suggested as an open indexed forum for all the neurosurgeons in the world and particularly those who cannot get hold of the available Journals. Again this is an invitation to all authors to send, in any format or in an up to 3000 words a contribution of their area of expertise.

You may be happy to know that our readership has increased about 80% each year in the past four. Most of the credit should be given to the support of our exceptional Past President, Prof.Edward Laws, to the help of the whole Administrative Council and to your kind support.

It is a pleasure to welcome and to let you know that the WFNS is honored by the election of our new President Prof. Dr Jacques Brotchi..

We have a lot to do with your help in the future, such as Sections and links with Clinical Neurology, Neurosurgical Nursing, Tumors, an Open Discussion Forum, etc.

Thank you for your future contributions and your continuing support.

Warm regards,

Dr. Eduardo A. Karol
WFNS Internet Editor
drkarol@fibertel.com.ar
drkarol@cvtci.com.ar