A thousand new year’s greetings from the ESNR

Abstract

Dear ESNR Members, Dear Friends, Another year has come and gone but it feels like only yesterday that we were writing last year’s New Year’s greeting. There must be some truth to the old saying that “time flies when you’re having fun”. Indeed, with pride and happiness, we can look back on what was really a very successful year 2011 for the European Society of Neuroradiology (ESNR). Let’s start with the “big news”: our Society has rounded the cape of 1,000 individual members. On 28 November 2011, Dr. Santiago Medrano from Barcelona, became the 1,000th member of ESNR. In only a few short years, membership in our Society has tripled. We are firmly convinced that this resounding success is a reflection of our policy of being inclusive rather than exclusive, and of actively reaching out to all those with an interest in neuroradiology. We expect that with the full implementation of institutional ESNR membership for members of national neuroradiology societies, our numbers will continue to grow in 2012. This brings us to the second item, which is the approval of the new ESNR statutes. On 17 December 2011, during a special business meeting in Antwerp convened by the ESNR Executive Committee, the new statutes of our Society were approved. The documents were diligently prepared by the lawyers of Schmid Attorneys at Law in Zurich, Switzerland. The new statutes are more transparent and structured and will provide our Society with a better legal and fiscal background and protection. Many of you will remember that several important proposals and amendments to the Constitution could not be approved during the Symposium Neuroradiologicum (Bologna, 4–9 October 2010) and during the 35th Annual Meeting (Antwerp, 22–25 September 2011), because we did not reach the required quorum in the ESNR General Assembly. Thanks to the new statutes, these decisions were confirmed during the special business meeting. We approved new ESNR members, whose applications were evaluated by the Membership Committee according to the new rules. The ‘institutional membership’ was also approved and the presidents of the different national neuroradiological societies or sections will soon receive an invitation to join the ESNR and obtain institutional membership for their national members. We also introduced the concept of ‘pending membership’, which allows new members to immediately enjoy reduced registration fees for congresses, courses and meetings organized by the ESNR. Thanks to the implementation of our new statutes, ESNR has become a better structured society, and with the institutional membership we will be able to further increase our membership. The 35th Annual Meeting of ESNR, preceded by the 19th Advanced Course in Diagnostic Neuroradiology and the 3rd Advanced Course on Interventional Neuroradiology, took place in Antwerp from 22 to 25 September 2011, and was organized by Prof. Paul M. Parizel and Prof. Johan Van Goethem (Fig. 1). We can look back on a very successful and pleasurable meeting, attended by almost 700 delegates. The advanced courses in diagnostic and interventional neuroradiology were organized around a central theme: ‘The aging brain and the crumbling spine’. The scientific program of the meeting offered a well-balanced mix of diagnostic G. E. Wilms (*) Department of Radiology, UZ Gasthuisberg, Herestraat 49, Leuven, Belgium e-mail: guido.wilms@uz.kuleuven.ac.be