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 As
our new President, Esther Middelkoop, outlines in her letter the 13th
Annual Meeting of the ETRS, held in September in Amsterdam and organized
by her team, was a great success. This year’s scientific programme
continued to build on the success of previous meetings, particularly in
combining both new basic research together with different aspects of problems
faced in clinical tissue repair. The ‘bullet’ or short presentations
by poster presenters again proved successful and highlighted the importance
of the work presented by the authors. Keith Harding, who initiated this
form of presentation at his meeting in Cardiff, continued to act as a
diligent moderator of this interactive session. As Esther Middelkoop stated,
September is a busy conference time and though we had almost 400 people
attending the percentage of our ETRS members in attendance could have
been much greater. We need to know what all of our members want the programme
to consist of at our annual meeting and one of Esther’s tasks in
her new presidency will be that of improving future membership attendance.
Next year our Annual Meeting will be part of the 2nd meeting of the World
Union of Wound Healing Societies in Paris, France (8–13 July 2004),
in which the ETRS is one of four co-hosting societies. The deadline for
abstracts for this meeting is 1 February 2004 and an abstract form is
enclosed in this Bulletin. Registration online can be made at: <http://www.wuwhs.org>
This meeting is following the success of the first meeting organised by
Mike Stacey and his colleagues in Melbourne four years ago. Luc Téot,
a member of the ETRS Board who will be President of our society in 2004,
has been working extremely hard with wound healing societies throughout
the world to make this event a great success.
Mark Ferguson, our outgoing president as well as being a member of the
society since its beginning, has contributed much to the continued growth
of the ETRS and this accomplishment is outlined in his report in this
issue. He will continue to be Secretary of the Society.
Keith Harding, in his term of presidency of the ETRS, established a number
of working groups for statements on in vitro models of wound
healing, standards for clinical care of patients with wounds and standards
for clinical trials in wound healing. This document which is presented
in this issue of the Bulletin is the result of the meeting of
the working groups which were held in Vienna in 2002 and Berlin in 2003
and was made possible by an educational grant from Johnson & Johnson,
one of our ETRS corporate sponsors. Keith presented this document at our
meeting in Amsterdam and it has been published on the ETRS website, and
since this is at this stage a working document, he is asking for comments
and suggestions. A letter from David Leaper on his thoughts follows the
discussion document, where he has raised a number of important points.
We hope that this will just be one of many letters that we receive on
this important and necessary policy statement made by the ETRS.
Greg Schulz, Diane Cooper, Keith Harding and Mark Ferguson
at the 13th Annual ETRS Meeting, Amsterdam
In this issue we have an article by Paul
Banwell of Oxford summarizing a talk that he gave in Amsterdam on ‘Advances
in burn wound treatment – some thoughts’ which was well received
at the meeting. Paul is also the main organiser of the upcoming ETRS Focus
Group meeting on Topical Negative Pressure (TNP therapy) which will be
held in London on 4–5 December of this year. An up-to date programme
is in this issue.
Lastly industry has made major contributions to our understanding the
pathophysiology and treatment in the treatment of wounds. The article
by John Chen of the Wound Healing Research Institute at ConvaTec Global
Development Centre, Deeside UK ‘A rethink of the complexity of chronic
wounds – implications for treatment’ highlights their contribution.
The Business Office has had a formal relationship with the ETRS since
the beginning of this year and its major task has been to ensure that
paid members of the society in 2003 that have requested subscription to
Wound Repair & Regeneration are receiving their journals. If you are
not, please contact us directly on: <oxfordwound@aol.com>
so that we can rectify your problems. Also please note that our Business
Office has a new address which can be found at the front of this issue.
Dr George W. Cherry
Editor
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