EUROPEAN  TISSUE  REPAIR  SOCIETY

PRESIDENT'S ANNUAL REPORT, AUGUST 1999-2000

During this period, two European Tissue Repair Society (ETRS) meetings were organised, the 3rd Joint ETRS/Wound Healing Society (WHS) Meeting in Bordeaux (August 24-28, 1999) and the 10th ETRS Annual Meeting in Brussels (May 24–27, 2000); the 2000 ETRS Annual Meeting was shifted from August to May in order to facilitate the attendance of European members to the 1st World Wound Healing Congress in Melbourne, Australia (September 10–13, 2000). As Bordeaux Meeting organiser, I can tell you that the finances of the meeting were very satisfactory allowing some benefits which together with the annual membership dues result in a very acceptable financial situation for the Society. Although the number of ETRS members has increased, we still have to improve this aspect; and in this respect, our Annual ETRS Meeting plays a very important role, and we need to maintain a high level of attendance.

Keith Harding will organise the 2001 ETRS Annual Meeting in Cardiff (September 6–8) and the 4th Joint WHS/ETRS 2002 Meeting will be in Baltimore (USA); for this Joint Meeting, Mark Ferguson will be responsible for discussion with the WHS concerning the organisation. In 2003 and 2004, the ETRS Annual Meetings will be in The Netherlands (Esther Middelkoop) and France (Luc Téot) respectively. Alberto Giannetti has proposed to organise the 5th Joint ETRS/WHS 2005 Meeting in Italy; which while being a wonderful proposition, must be discussed again and approved by the WHS.

The Society must avoid the duplication of meetings on tissue repair; in this way, the number of ETRS satellite meetings will be limited. An ETRS satellite meeting will take place in May 2001 on ‘Scars’ (Luc Téot, Montpellier, France); during this meeting, basic and clinical aspects will be discussed. As mentioned in a previous editorial (ETRS Bulletin, vol. 6, issue 4, 1999), a formal association between ETRS and a wound management society is ruled out and the co-organization of meetings is definitely not a beneficial approach. However, a state of the art educational day with a high scientific/clinical level will be organized before the scientific sessions of our meetings.

New ETRS Board members have been elected (Sabine Werner, Alberto Giannetti, Luc Téot, and Raj Mani) and the large numbers of members who voted at this election has been underlined. The result of this election allows us to maintain a good representation for the different European countries and a multi-disciplinary nature by having a good balance between clinical and scientific disciplines.

Among ETRS Board members, we have voted to design the three ETRS Board members who will participate in the activities of the Wound Healing Society Publications Committee (Finn Gottrup, Mark Ferguson, and Luc Téot); their participation is important because the Publications Committee is involved in decisions concerning Wound Repair and Regeneration, the official journal of the WHS, the ETRS, the Japanese Society for Wound Healing, and the Australian Wound Management Association. The quality of this journal, now indexed in Current Contents Clinical Medicine and Life Sciences, is increasing, and we must submit high quality papers in particular to develop the European distribution and impact of the journal. The fact that Wound Repair and Regeneration organised an Editorial Board Meeting during the Brussels ETRS Annual Meeting has been appreciated by ETRS and underlines the important role that ETRS must play in the promotion of the journal in Europe. Moreover, an electronic version will be soon available.

The role of the ETRS Business Office has been well acknowledged and ETRS Bulletin, thanks to the work of the ETRS Business Office, provides interesting information on different research laboratories and companies involved in tissue repair. The Bulletin remains an essential means to allow the development of the Society and to attract new members; it must also be a link between all members and, to this end, we invite you to submit papers in which your ideas concerning all aspects of tissue repair are outlined. Letters to the Editor can also be published.

Another important way to increase the circulation of the information, the exchange of ideas, and to bring up criticisms, is via the web site. Everybody will agree that the web site must be developed and better organised. It has been definitely decided that ETRS will pay for a professional web-site manager both to reorganise the site and also to regularly update it.

As the Society is definitely now reaching adulthood (twelve years old!), we have decided to draw up more formal guidelines, particularly to assist current and future meeting organisers and to facilitate and clarify our relationships with the companies and the organisation of sponsorship. The mandate of the ETRS Business Office has been renewed for three years; however, clear guidelines will be established to better define the connections between the ETRS Business Office and the Society, particularly, because of the development of the web site and if a financial support is to be provided by the Society.

In conclusion, at the end of my mandate, I would like to underline once more that the originality of ETRS (and its development) is based on the mixing of people who are doing basic research and clinical research. The Society must remain attractive to everybody, including nurses, clinicians, and basic researchers, who are doing a high quality research on tissue repair. The criteria to judge the quality of the research must be equal to those in other research domains, and the same statistical standards of significance must be used. Finally, the Society must encompass all research domains in tissue repair including organs other than skin; not only basic mechanisms of tissue repair (which are in many aspects similar in different organs) are concerned but also the development of therapeutic solutions (including tissue engineering) to improve wound repair and the quality of life of patients. The Society must also be federalist to avoid the development of ‘competitive’ societies which would lead to a dilution of the society’s activities.

An exceptional ETRS Board Meeting will be organised in Paris in November in order to hasten progress in these different domains. As President, I take this opportunity to thank all ETRS Board members and the ETRS Business Office for their involvement in the activities of the Society.

Do not hesitate to give us your feedback, ideas and your suggestions concerning the ETRS management and the construction of an informative and convivial web site.

Alexis Desmouliére
President