European Tissue Repair Society, President and Secretary’s Report
2002–2003

It has been my pleasure and privilege to serve as the President of the European Tissue Repair Society from 2002 to 2003. The past year has been busy and productive. Below I summarise some of the highlights.

ETRS past President, Professor Keith Harding, did an excellent job in conducting a strategic review of the European Tissue Repair Society, which resulted in a number of important statements, terms of reference, objectives and recommendations. We have implemented these recommendations. The major change has been formalisation of the relationship between the ETRS and the ETRS Business Office. A formal contract has been put in place, which will be subject to review in December 2003. Specific objectives have been set for the Business Office and the services they provide to the ETRS members clarified. This relationship has been developing and bodes well for the future.
The ETRS has held Board meetings in Baltimore (as part of the joint Wound Healing Society / ETRS meeting) on 30 May 2002, and in Nice (as part of the ETRS Focussed meeting) on 13 September 2002. Additionally a special meeting involving the President/Secretary, Treasurer and Business Office took place on 21 December 2002 to clarify, develop and enhance the operational arrangements for the ETRS Business Office. The full minutes of the ETRS Board meetings have been published in the ETRS Bulletin.

Following on from the success of an ETRS Focussed meeting on Chronic Wound Healing in Vienna 2002, the Board decided to establish some working groups under the Chairmanship of Professor Keith Harding. The topics of these working groups were discussed at another ETRS Focussed meeting in Berlin in June 2003 and Keith Harding will present the interim findings at the ETRS general meeting in Amsterdam. We thank Keith and the members of the working groups for all of their efforts and encourage them to continue to develop and complete these important tasks.

A further ETRS Focussed Group meeting took place in Nice, France in September 2003 focussing on new technologies and advances in wound healing. Future ETRS Focussed meetings have been approved for ‘Tissue Repair, Contraction and Myofibroblasts’ during the last quarter of 2004 in Nyon, Switzerland and on ‘Topical Negative Pressure Therapy and Chronic Wounds’ in London 4–6 December 2003.

The ETRS has been heavily involved as the co-hosting society of the World Union of Wound Healing Societies meetings scheduled to take place in Paris in 2004 under the leadership of Luc Téot. There have been several meetings with members of the other co-hosting societies to develop and agree the arrangements for the meting, the structure and content of the programme and the financial and contractual matters surrounding the meeting. Luc Téot and his team are pulling together a very ambitious and promising meeting, which should be the first time that all of the major wound healing societies around the globe have met in a single location. We thank Luc and his team for their efforts and encourage them on to produce a truly spectacular meeting next year.
We have enjoyed an amicable relationship with the Wound Healing Society in USA, and specifically we have been more closely involved with Wound Repair and Regeneration. Finn Gottrup serves as one of the Clinical Science Editors, Keith Harding and Luc Téot serve as two of the four Associate Editors and the ETRS is represented on the Editorial Board by Bernard Coulomb, Esther Middel-koop, Marco Romanelli, Sabine Werner and myself. The ETRS has been consulted and had major input into all aspects of Wound Repair and Regeneration via the Publications Committee under the able Chairmanship of Patricia Hebda. ETRS representatives on the Publications Committee include Finn Gottrup, Luc Téot and myself. We believe that we have, at last, established a mechanism with Blackwells to ensure that copies of Wound Repair and Regeneration are mailed to all ETRS members and that all members now have electronic access to the journal via the Synergy database.

We believe that long standing, minor, but extremely irritating problems have now been eliminated. Wound Repair and Regeneration always requires high quality clinical and scientific papers. Its citation index is rising and I encourage the membership to submit their papers to our journal.

Next year’s annual ETRS meeting will form part of the exciting World Wound Healing Meeting being organised in Paris from 8–13 July 2004. The ETRS 2005 meeting will be held in Germany and is being organised by Professor Becker and Professor Karin Scharffetter-Kochanek. This year’s ETRS Annual meeting has been organised by Esther Middlekoop and we thank Esther and her team for the major efforts they have put in to ensure the success of our 2003 Annual Meeting.

Finally, I wish Dr Esther Middelkoop every success as the 2003–2004 President of the ETRS.

Professor Mark WJ Ferguson
19 September 2003 - Manchester