• DOI:10.1177/1591019915618059
• Corpus ID: 206769425

Letter from the President of WFITN

@article{Pult2015LetterFT,
  title={Letter from the President of WFITN},
  author={Frauke Pult and A Broeg and Jan Gralla},
  journal={Interventional Neuroradiology},
  year={2015},
  volume={21},
  pages={3 - 3}
}

• F. Pult, A. Broeg, J. Gralla
• Published 1 November 2015
• Medicine
• Interventional Neuroradiology

For the first time since its creation, the WFITN holds its congress in Australia. A distant country for most of us, but a country that has showed will, energy and enthusiasm to welcome us for the most important meeting of our Federation. What a symbol of the wide spread interest in this speciality, and of the importance of a young branch of the neurosciences! Australia furthermore allows us to celebrate in Gold Coast the 25th anniversary of our Federation, in a city so far away from its original birthplace in Val d’Isère in 1990. Indeed, during a snowy January night after the scientific sessions of the WIN, nine neuro-interventionists met and set up the bases of what has become the World Federation of Interventional and Therapeutic Neuroradiology. Let me here pay a warm tribute to Alex Berenstein, Katsuia Goto, Pierre Lasjaunias (þ), Andrew Molyneux, Jacques Moret, Makoto Negoro, Luc Picard, Akira Takahashi and Fernando Vinuela, pioneers of our discipline, without whom we would not stand where we currently are. I send my most cordial thanks to Winston Chong, President of the 2015 Gold Coast meeting, to Mark Khangure, Honorary President of the meeting, to the local team of the organizing committee led by Hal Rice and Laetitia de Villiers, as to the ANZSNR, for hosting and organizing this congress that, I am sure, will fulfill all our expectations and prove once again the vitality of our discipline. Two years since the meeting in Buenos Aires have passed, two years during which interventional neuroradiology has evolved, not only through the development of new devices, but also because it has confirmed its important place in the management of ischemic strokes. We have become unavoidable partners of the neuroscientific community, and interventional neuroradiology dialogues currently face to face with all its correspondents. Recognized, necessary, and respected, what are described as endovascular therapies, surgical neuroangiographic procedures, or minimally invasive neurological therapies, are performed worldwide nowadays and one cannot imagine a team interested in neurovascular diseases that would not collaborate with an interventional neuroradiologist: what a path has been trodden since the first attempts of endovascular treatments in non operable patients! These developments and successes have needed to be structured and, during its 25 years of life, through its various congresses, and specific working seminars, the WFITN has endorsed its full responsibility of a mature scientific society in publishing important recommendations about training, relationships with industry, continuing education. These recommendations have had and still have a strong impact in the organization of interventional neuroradiology in all continents, which witnesses the importance of our Society. The Executive Committee that I have had the honour to chair since 2013 has been the link of a long chain of activities induced by all former Presidents, which allowed the WFITN to continue to live and form itself. The last two years have been very active for the Executive Committee that you have trusted by your votes in Buenos Aires. I want to thank again here all its members, Serge Bracard, Darren Orbach, Luc Picard, Sirintara Pongpech, Jurgen Reul, Michael Soderman, Allan Taylor, Karel Ter Brugge, René Van den Berg, who have supported all the ideas and projects that we have launched, and who all have spent lots of time and dedicated their energy to fill the missions which were assigned to them. I hope that you will consider that some positive impulse has been given to the WFITN thanks to their work and participation. The four projects that we proposed during this mandate (new website, new constitution, charter of Ethics, teaching courses in Interventional Neuroradiology of the WFITN) have found their accomplishments or are on their way to be finalized. All details will be given to you during the next General Assembly, during which you will elect a new Executive Committee that, I am sure, will continue to work for our Federation with the same spirit of dedication, sense of community, and success as those that have been shown by our mentors and predecessors. During this next General Assembly, you will also have to vote for the President of the 2019 meeting and the city that is proposed to host this conference. The traditional intercontinental rotational rules will continue to allow the WFITN to travel from one continent to another, and to communicate thus with scientific partners all over the world. But we are not there for the moment. Let us first enjoy the quality of this meeting and be enriched by all the scientific knowledge that will be shared with us.