Message of Our President

Dear Members of the Executive Committee (EC), Dear Members of the European Society of Neurosonology and Cerebral Hemodynamics (ESNCH), Dear friends and colleagues, First of all, I would like to thank everybody who placed their confidence in me as the New President of the ESNCH. It is with great honour that I accept this nomination. I would also like to congratulate the newly elected executive committee (EC). As the President of the ESNCH, I promise that the EC and I will do our best to serve the society, and maintain the trust of our members, through a transparent administration and a timely and constant monitoring of pertinent objectives. Surely, much water has flown down the Spree river, since as a young doctor I attended the first meeting of this Society in 1996 in Munich organized perfectly by Prof. Jürgen Klingelhöfer and Prof. Eva Bartels, and received a poster award from Prof. Rune Aaslid (the inventor of TCD) and Prof. David Russell (our founding President). Ten years have also past since I was elected Secretary of this Society at the 2007 ESNCH conference in Budapest. During this period, I had the privilege to work with great presidents (Prof. Kurt Niederkorn, Prof. Laszlo Csiba and Prof. Natan Bornstein) and so I begin my speech by paying tribute to them, because if we are able to do more it will also be thanks to them. In recent years, there has been a steady increase of membership. Presently, we have about 800 members making the ESNCH the most popular and successful neurosonology group in the world. As such, the EC and I are committed to prove that we are worthy of your support and confidence. Our on-going projects include further fostering our longstanding partnerships with other scientific societies, such as ESO, EAN, EFSUMB, NSRG. The success of this society has also been shown by the significant attendance at our yearly conference and at our summer school, where many young colleagues receive training and have the possibility to obtain the international certification. To facilitate this training, many of us senior members have contributed to the publication of a manual of neurosonology which was released last year, and represents our legacy to a new generation of neurosonologists and future leaders in this field of medicine. But, we should ask ourselves if it is enough to organize conferences and courses? I believe it is not. Our vision should be wider: some day we should have our own indexed journal, we should have a significant restyling of our website including patient education information, we should enter the social media, we should have task forces for each chapter of neurosonology in order to write guidelines, we should create research grants for youngsters who would like to receive training in one of our laboratories. We should be able to reach every part of the world and share our information and know how. This is my vision. However, these are also very challenging times. The world economical crisis has led to a decrease of sponsors and contribution by sponsors. Moreover, neuroradiology has taken most of the spotlight in neurovascular medicine, so that many neurology residents are attracted to that world made of beautiful and seductive images obtained within a few minutes without any apparent effort. We should be aware of the risks associated with this practice: less young neurologists are visiting patients, and more futile neuroradiology exams are requested. We need to counter this by providing evidence-based information on neurosonology, publishing our guidelines, strengthening our ties with ESO and EAN, and attracting young colleagues in certified neurovascular centres. We really need to plan, engage, and innovate. Therefore, I invite each and every member of the ESNCH to join us in this global vision. I assure that the EC and I will work with focus and determination, with passion and conviction, to make the ESNCH presence felt in the world scientific community, and make it a Society we can all be proud of. To do this, we will need all your support.