WSSFN - President's Address

It is a great honour to be elected as President of the WSSFN. Our field of work is amongst the most exciting in medicine and science. Our society is vibrant and in a period of growth and prosperity.

This spirit was captured at the WSSFN quadrennial meeting held in Rome, June 13-17, 2005 under President Brian Brophy and with Mario Meglio serving as the principal meeting organizer. Approximately 400 WSSFN members and guests participated in a program that highlighted innovations in surgery for psychiatric disorders, movement disorders, epilepsy and pain. These were complemented by important presentations on advances in basic sciences related to imaging and cellular neurophysiology. There were over 100 oral presentations and 150 poster presentations with over two dozens plenary lectures. The Spiegel and Wycis awards were presented to two luminaries in our field, Alim-Louis Benabid and Patrick Kelly. They join a long and distinguished list of pioneers who have previously been so-recognized. Two talented fellows, Drs Temel Yasin and Talamoni Fonoff were recognized and received awards for their outstanding papers. It is wonderful to know that there are so many talented young neurosurgeons in our field that are active in our society.

One of the strengths of our international society is the ability to interact with our colleagues throughout the world. The problems facing our patients are similar. However, the approaches in Asia, South America, Europe and North America can be quite different. This contributes to the richness and diversity of our society. The convening power of our society and the forum it provides for interactions and exchange serves as one of the important drivers for innovation in the field of Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery.

As we move forward during my term as President, our society will work in four distinct areas: 1. Internal organization, governance and communication;
2. Enhancing the value of Membership;
3. Quadrennial meetings, Regional meetings;
4. Enhancing our Journal;

Internal Organization and Governance and Communication
The new executive officers of the WSSFN including the President, Vice-President (Joachim Krauss) the Secretary Treasurer (Taka Taira) and the assistant secretary Treasurer (Michael Schulder) are holding periodic conference calls to plan strategy and direction for our society. These individuals are complemented by important representation from all disciplines in our field from diverse geographic locations on the WSSFN Board. I am thrilled to be working with such talented individuals. With the advent of the electronic age, our society will use this medium, particularly our web site under the direction of Michael Kaplitt to promote communication and interactions. We will set up online services including registration, membership application, payment of membership dues, registration for meetings and abstract submissions. Our intention is to also initiate an online search engine so that we may be able to find each other and communicate better. We have an agreement with the American Association of Neurological Surgeons to serve as our secretariat and will contract with them to provide the services our society requires. In a further effort to help communication, we have appointed an editor of the WSSFN newsletter, and I am very pleased that Dr. Michael Oh has taken on this important role. Michael has done an excellent job in organizing the newsletter which is available on the web site. Please communicate with him for possible contributions and ideas.

Membership
The membership is vital to our Society. To this end, we are facilitating membership application and including allied health specialties as well as fellows and residents in our membership categories thanks to a change in our bylaws. Indeed we can now allow residents and fellows to join for a one-time fee of $25.00, and are providing access to the journal at reduced fees for residents and allied health professionals. We need to keep our membership list and contact information current and will form a membership committee with a chair to facilitate this process. This membership committee’s mandate will be to add value to WSSFN membership.

Meetings
The WSSFN will continue to have quadrennial meetings as we have had since 1961. The next meeting will be held in 2009 in Toronto. More details will follow as the time nears. I encourage all members to write me with their comments and suggestions on the organization and content of this meeting. Because of the international flavor of our Society and because the meetings are only every four years, we will initiate smaller regional meetings on a yearly or biennial basis to increase outreach in education in Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery in areas that may be under-serviced. There was a successful meeting in Riyadh in December of 2003, the first such regional meeting, and I am pleased to announce that the second regional meeting will be held in Shanghai from July 7-8, 2006. Dr. Bomin Sun from Shanghai will be the organizer of this meeting, and further details will be posted on the web. The objective of this meeting will be outreach in education in Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery in this region. I would invite the membership to propose other sites for this type of regional meetings in subsequent years.

The Journal
The journal of Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery is one of the main means of communication under the excellent leadership of Dr. David Roberts. The journal is flourishing in its quality and in the breadth of the materials published. All members are encouraged to use the journal as a way of disseminating their scientific work. The publisher of our Journal, Karger has agreed to allow free online access to WSSFN members. More details are and will be available at www.wssfn.org

We thus have 4 pillars in our Society: our outstanding membership, our meetings, our journal and our mission to increase education and research in Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery. The strengths and success of our society will be a function of the involvement of our talented members and those we can persuade to our ideals and our cause as we push forward the frontiers of science in Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery and help our patients.

I very much look forward to serving as your President and moving forward with you.

Website editor, Joseph Neimat, MD
Last Updated 04/4/2007