by Günther Deuschl
The past year has been a good year for neurology. With the major progress for neurological treatments and the aging of the population, neurology is becoming one of the key disciplines of medicine. Its organized bodies like the World Federation of Neurology, the regional societies in America, Asia and Europe as well as the specialty societies for stroke, movement disorders, dementia, multiple sclerosis and many other diseases are becoming the key drivers of this development.
For our Society 2017 was a busy year. The congress in Amsterdam was a showcase of modern neurology and given the fact that 45 % of the 6000 participants were under 40 years old and 45% were female neurologists/residents in Neurology makes us proud to have the new generation in our Society. The next congress is already far advanced in planning under the leadership of our program and education committees and we await a very interesting meeting in Lisbon.
The scientific bodies of the EAN, particularly the panels and the scientific committee are strongly moving forward. The current main task of these panels is to work on the state-of-the-art summaries of neurological diseases in the format of guidelines. Currently 20 guidelines – mostly together with the European Subspecialty Societies for the relevant fields – are under preparation or completed. Five of them are published or in press like the prehospital management of stroke, cerebral venous thrombosis, stimulation for neuropathic pain and tick-borne encephalitis. We are particularly pleased that the Multiple Sclerosis guideline together with ECTRIMS has come to completion and will be published very soon. The task forces are working hard on these projects.
The scientific panels are always looking for expert collaborators to join the guideline committees. New fields will be Parkinson’s disease, dementia, ALS, peripheral neuropathy and many other core fields of neurology. Particularly for younger expert colleagues, offering collaboration within our society can be a fruitful start for them into a scientific career. The way forward is to become an individual member of the Society, to join the scientific panels of your interest and join task forces within the scientific panels.
The Assembly of Delegates is another body of the Society which makes important decisions for the Society. Among many other key decisions, the Assembly of Delegates is electing the board of EAN and also the location of the congresses. Currently individual members of the EAN are asked to run as candidates for a seat in our Assembly. Every individual member of our Society can run for one of these positions. 2018 will be the next board elections and the newly elected Assembly of Delegates will be responsible for this. Applicants will have to submit a short CV and an application form, which will include information on past contributions to EAN, positions held, participation in EAN congresses, & proposed activities for the future.
The deadline is December 8th and the application has to be sent to headoffice@ean.org. The voting will take place online by all full members of our Society. They will receive an e-mail early February asking for their vote through a web-based voting system.
Christmas and the New Year are rapidly approaching,
and I wish all of you peaceful and quiet Christmas with your families
and all the best for 2018.
For all of us I hope that 2018 will become another productive Neurologic Year.
