ETRS Stuttgart, September 2005

THE European Tissue Repair Society has once again accepted to co-organize a meeting with other groups. As in Paris last year during the 2nd World Union of Wound Healing Societies, a common meeting combining all specialities of wound healers had been brillantly developed by our German colleagues and specifically by the two main organizers, Prof H D. Becker and Prof K. Scharfetter-Kochanek. These initiatives increase the global awareness of wound healing. Debates and exchange of ideas between researchers, clinicians and nurses has not always been successful in the past. In the mind of each of these groups, we note less and less resistance to mixing. The time has come to share the difficulties and the clinical exigences as well as the necessity of having strong fundamental developments of new products, new understanding of physiology, and new orientations in daily wound management.

This is why we strongly supported the initiative of having a pre-meeting on ‘How to become a Wound Healer’, presenting to professionals desirous of embracing this career its essential needs, difficulties and future possibilities. Links with the American Wound Healing Society are becoming closer, and, thanks to the WHS President Prof Jeff Davidson, new opportunitities for exchange present themselves.

The ETRS is also linked to the WHS through the common journal Wound Repair and Regeneration, whose impact factor has recently increased, due to the quality policy of the Executive Committee. The consequence is, for most of us, a longer waiting period before published, a small price to pay for having one’s paper published in this journal. We will certainly improve some of the major sources of impatience for our colleagues because the number of pages will soon be increased.

Other journals have been developed by past or present Presidents or Members of the ETRS Board. Keith Harding has developed and initiated the International Wound Journal, Raj Mani the International Journal of Lower Extremity Wounds, Marco Romanelli the Italian journal Vulnologia and ourselves the French Journal des Plaies et Cicatrisations. This intense activity in publication is a testimony to the strong scientific force of our group. The ETRS is the most prestigious scientific society in wound healing in Europe, attracting all the potential of research, not only in skin reconstruction, but more globally in tissue regeneration. Its appeal is expanding and other groups in Europe are willing to develop more and more collaboration, and to exchange symposia during meetings (European Association of Dermatology, European Tissue Engineering Society, European Society of Biomaterials, European Society of Surgical Research). Such collaboration at the highest level confirms the imperative necessity of adapting our group to new challenges: educational programs, openings for new researchers, exchanging programs devoted to facilitating research into wound healing, both clinical and fundamental. This complementarity is obvious at the patient bedside. Interest in wound healing has become a longitudinal problem, involving the patient, the politicians, the caregiver and the physician in a common desire to limit the consequences of wounds, whatever be their level of knowledge and their skills. The future is to discover, and the ETRS will be in this future.

Luc Téot
Past President of the European Tissue Repair Society.