This meeting was held in Debrecen, Hungary, September 1-4, 2004, under the guidance of Iren Mikoand IstvaΒ΄n Furka, Congress President and Honorary Congress President, respectively. They are to be congratulated on a superbly managed meeting, including the expertly produced program book, the rich social program with its marvelous music, and the scheduling that accommodated intensive academics and opportunities to see a jewel of a city and some of its beautiful surroundings.
The greatest accomplishment, however, was how the Society put on a program that truly lived up to its name. Two hundred registrants participated, and they represented centers from Europe, North Africa, Asia, North and South American, and Australia. The material presented will be the basis for much of the innovation to be published in the coming year. Sessions included topics of technical innovation, transplantation biology, clinical challenges, and aspects of teaching microsurgery and research. These sessions added up to a whole that depicted a great deal of what is new and vital in many fields that overlap into the territory called microsurgery.
After the 6 th Congress of this organization, Dr. Huifang Chen edited a special issue of Microsurgery composed of articles based on presentations given at the meeting. 1 This issue was a very successful addition to the journal. The Society's current president, Dr. Heinz-Jochen Gassel of Wuerzburg, Germany, will serve as guest editor with a special editorial board to produce another special issue based on the Society's papers.
The next meeting of this society will be in Montreal in 2006, under the Congress Presidency of Dr. Huifang Chen. Investigators doing serious experimental and clinical work in microsurgery should give this meeting and this organization serious consideration. The International Society for Experimental Microsurgery may offer the most intense and valuable program in our field.