European Society of Surgery to hold annual conference in Malta

Some 150 surgeons from Europe and the United States are expected to descend on Malta this week for the annual conference of the European Society of Surgery.

The four-day conference, being held at the InterContinental, St Julian's, starts on Thursday and is open for local registration to members of the nursing, medical and paramedical professions.

The society is currently chaired by Professor Lino Cutajar, who together with another Maltese, Professor Sir Alfred Cuschieri, was last year elected to the 11-member Executive Council for a four-year term that ends in 2007. The other council members hail from Belgium, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg, Poland and Italy.

A pre-conference workshop will be held on Thursday on advances in minimal access surgery, including virtual reality surgery, with the participation of surgeons from Belgium France, Germany, Malta and the US.

The Chancellor of the University of Malta, Professor John Rizzo Naudi, will open the conference and Professor Cutajar will give an address on 'Advances in Surgery in an Enlarged European Community - Old Challenges and New Horizons'.

Four surgeons from the Mayo Clinic in the US are expected to attend. Their visit is being made possible with assistance from the clinic and they, along with surgeons from France, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK, will be keynote speakers in a symposium with the theme 'Training the Surgeon for the Future'.

There will be a large poster section and prizes will be donated to the best research papers. Other topics that will be discussed in detail include abdominal cancer (stomach, pancreas, colon), breast cancer, endocrine pathology, thrombosis and embolism, laser therapy as well as recent advances in diagnosing bowel disease.

At the end of the conference the society will hold its annual general meeting when a new president for 2005 will be elected. Among the other high-profile participants will be Mr John Smith, president of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, and the society's secretary general Professor Luc Michel.

The European Society of Surgery was launched in Rome in 1997. Its main objective is to act as a bridge between the surgically advanced Western European countries and those of Eastern Europe, newly emerging from Communist rule, often lacking in material resources but full of potential and mental resourcefulness.

What started as an experiment is now a reality with many of the Eastern European countries, some of which recently joined the EU, very active in the field of surgery, as has been made quite clear in the annual meetings of the Society. It is envisaged that further co-operation between East and West will result in interchange of surgical specialists and co-operation in surgical research.

Speaking to The Sunday Times last week, Professor Cutajar said: "I am proud that Maltese surgery is taking such a leading role in the society."