Budapest 2001

Following Graz, Madrid and Brussels, Budapest hosted the 4th European Congress of Pediatric Surgery in 2001. At the meeting state-of-the-art lectures (A. Aynsley-Green, A. Coran, J. Grosfeld, A. Holschneider, M. Höllwarth, A. Schärli, D. Young), meet-the-expert lunches, digitally interactive poster presentations and a large number of laboratory-based research and clinical papers were delivered by young or experienced pediatric surgeons. The lectures came not only from Europe but from all over the world. A selection of these papers is presented in this issue of the European Journal of Pediatric Surgery, giving an excellent cross section of the quality and range of the congress.

With this issue, the 4th European Congress of Pediatric Surgery is pleased to announce the association established between the European Union of Pediatric Surgical Associations and the European Journal of Pediatric Surgery. I wish to offer my sincere thanks to the editors, Prof. A. M. Holschneider and Prof. Y. Revillon, and the publishers of Thieme and Masson for making this possible. Furthermore, I would like to thank all the authors and colleagues for the submission of their manuscripts.

One aspect not portrayed in this issue is another important and very successful feature of the Budapest meeting: the social programme. From the responses I have received, this was also very successful, with many new contacts being made between individuals from widely separate parts of the continent and the world. Hopefully these will be cemented in the future and exchanges and interactions between pediatric surgeons will increase in Europe and worldwide. This will help to achieve our goal of improving the care of children who have “surgical” problems.

I hope that interested readers will gain new knowledge and inspiration from this issue.

Further papers presented at the EUPSA Congress 2001 will be published in the next issue, see page 286.

Andrew B. Pinter (Pécs, Hungary)