Report of the 54th Annual Congress of the British Association of Paediatric Surgeons, Edinburgh, Scotland

Abstract

The 54th Annual International Congress of the British Association of Paediatric Surgeons (BAPS) was held in Edinburgh, Scotland, on the 17th to 20th of July 2007. This was the fourth occasion on which the meeting had been held in this historic city, the current home of the Scottish parliament. The BAPS Congress came here first in 1957, 3 years after the organization was established. More than 360 delegates attended this year, representing nearly 40 nations and indicating the continuing international relevance of BAPS. The program of 81 articles and 41 poster presentations were selected from the 312 abstracts submitted. This year, further efforts had been made to make the selection process as objective as possible, and this was reflected in a high-quality, diverse, and interesting program. Many thanks to Richard Stewart, the honorable secretary of BAPS, and all those who put in so much hard work to achieve this. As in previous years, we had 3 keynote speakers. The first was the Mason Brown lecture delivered by Mr John Orr, who is the current president of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and past chairman of the Intercollegiate Specialist Advisory Committee for Paediatric Surgery. James Mason Brown was a founder member of BAPS, a past president of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, and a past president of BAPS. The lecture was endowed to commemorate his unique contribution to pediatric surgery, which was sadly cut short because of his untimely death. Mr Orr, because of his roles in the college and in pediatric surgical training, was uniquely placed to speak on “Paediatric surgery: education and training then and now.” The second keynote speaker was Prof Paul Tam from Hong Kong. His early pediatric surgical training was