Executive Page

The European Academy of Neurology is announcing its third congress from June 24th- June 27th at the RAI Congress Center in Amsterdam. We are expecting more than 6000 neurologists from Europe and all over the world for this outstanding annual event. The programme and the education committee of the EAN worked hard to create a program which will present cutting edge science and first class education for the general neurologist. The purpose is to present excellence in neurology and when the participants leave the congress they will know all about the current status and the important news in our field.

The revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) is a highly complicated process handled by experts in statistics at the WHO in Geneva. The influence of Neurological Societies onto the creation of a revision is through the accredited Societies which are for Neurology and Stroke the World Federation of Neurology (WFN) and the World Stroke Organisation (WSO). They are working within the Topic Advisory Group Neurology (TAGN) and can only make recommendations to the experts. April 2011 the TAGN advised to shift the section “Cerebrovascular diseases” covering all types of stroke from the “Diseases of the circulatory system” class (as it is in ICD-10) into the “Diseases of the nervous system” class (as it proposed in the draft ICD-11). This corresponds to a change of the statistical and legal placement of stroke from Internal Medicine to Neurology. This was then executed accordingly 5 years ago and stroke went under the neurological diseases (08) in the beta-version of the ICD-11. Neurologists all over the world agreed with this decision.

The annual congress is the most important event of our Society. This year European and International Neurologists are invited to attend the third EAN congress in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, June 24-27. Literally hundreds of EAN-members are involved to in the preparation of this congress. I wanted to explain to our members how the congress programme is developed. In its third year of existence of the Society, some of the preparation has come to routine but most of the tasks are highly challenging year after year as one of the aims of the Society is to have new innovations every year.

2 years ago I have already highlighted the work of the European Affairs sub-Committee of the European Academy of Neurology. This is to more closely introduce the partners of EAN at this in Brussels. It is important that our members know about activities of our Society on a European level.

It is unknown which of his many books James Parkinson (1755-1825) has considered the most important one. His 500 pages ‘Medical Admonitions’ for lay people, his ‘Chemical Pocket Book’ covering interesting facts on modern chemistry of the late 18th century, the ‘Hospital Pupil’ on the educational standards of physician education, his collection of minerals and fossils  ‘Organic Remains of a Former World’ or any other of his many contributions. History has clearly shown that his most important contribution was his 1817 ‘Essay on the Shaking Palsy’ which celebrates its 200th birthday this year.

European institutions are sometimes discredited and put into questions. This is particularly true in these times of populistic political movements which try to steer the wheel of European unification backwards. Reasons given by opponents are that ‘European efforts are considered too slow, too burocratic and too inflexible’. ‘There are too many cooks preparing the meal’. Sometimes we hear this also from scientists. The logical conclusion is to spend the money at home in their own countries. The latter view is sometimes even expressed by people who in principle share the European perspective. Populistic politicians go so far to even question the whole EU project. In this respect medical research community can make an argument and a big contribution to the understanding why the EU is important.

EAN pages strives to present one country every month to the readers of the EAN pages. We have seen presentations from Albania, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, and Ireland so far and I would draw your attention to these wonderful articles in our newsblog. This month we have Latvia and in December it will be Moldovia. The country where the EAN congresses take place (so far Germany and Denmark) are even presented in a series of articles covering special aspects of the development of local neurology. The top neurologists from these countries take their time to present important aspects of their country like Denmark did before the Copenhagen congress in 2016. In a series of seven articles they have presented the state of the art and research in their country concerning basic MS research, pain, dementia, clinical MS research, cerebral blood flow research, clinical neurophysiology and headache. The care structures for patients and how research is helping to develop new treatments and new innovations are outlined and one can learn from their success. Whenever I read their presentations it reminds me to the rich history of neurology in Europe. All the different countries were able to show their particular contribution to the field and the achievements they have reached to provide better patient care.

It is a dream of neurologists to cure degenerative diseases. The big brothers, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease have always been a huge burden of the population but are now, in the millennium of increasing population age becoming a scourge of humanity. While everybody is acknowledging this, both PD (1) and AD (2) communities of clinician researchers and basic researchers are preparing to attack the problem fundamentally frequently unnoticed by the general neurology community.

It is a dream of neurologists to cure degenerative diseases. The big brothers, Alzheimers’ and Parkinsons’ disease have always been a huge burden of the population but are now, in the millennium of increasing population age becoming a scourge of humanity. While everybody is acknowledging this, both PD1 and AD2 communities of clinician researchers and basic researchers are preparing to attack the problem fundamentally frequently unnoticed by the general neurology community.

During the second EAN congress in Copenhagen, the current board of the EAN has been reappointed with a very strong majority and as the first president elect of the newly structured board, Franz Fazekas from Graz, Austria was elected. He will be the next president in two years from now. The board and myself thank the delegates for this confidence shown to us. We interpret this as a strong mandate to follow and expand the tracks that we have already started to follow. This is to briefly outline two of these avenues. Meanwhile, the major goals for our Society are outlined in the strategic plan.

The 2nd congress of the EAN took place May 28-31, 2016 at the Bella Conference Center in Copenhagen. We had 5500 attendees who took part in 40 Symposia, focused workshops and special sessions. Among the many highlights were the outstanding presentations by the awardees of the Romberg, Golgi and Brown-Séquard lectures during the presidents plenary and the last-minute session on the ‘epidemiology, clinical presentations and immunology of Zika-Virus induced neurological diseases’ (This session can be viewed on the members-only part of the EAN-website). More than 4500 participants attended the 40 educational events with many new innovations like case-based facilitated workshops, more hands-on courses and career-development sessions. More than 1500 abstracts were presented in 28 oral and 117 electronic poster sessions.

The new website of the European Academy of Neurology is online! This is an important step for our Society to have this exciting tool for communication. It has taken some time since making the plans in 2014 but now most of the expectations are met.

On March 18th, 2016 the ‘Consensus statement on European Brain Research’ (Morris et al., 2016) has been launched in Brussels at the Brussel office of the European Brain Council. Several organisations related to brain science, including the European Academy of Neurology, participated. The European Brain Council is uniting the European organisations of physicians for Neurology, Psychiatry, Neurosurgery, the scientists for both molecular and systemic Neurosciences and the European patient organisations for neurological and psychiatric diseases (see below 1).