As an addition to the European postgraduate training system for young
neurosurgeons we began to publish in 1974 this series of Advances and
Technical Standards in Neurosurgery which was later sponsored by the
European Association of Neurosurgical Societies. This series was first
discussed in 1972 at a combined meeting of the Italian and German
Neurosurgical Societies in Taormina, the founding fathers of the series
being Jean Brihaye, Bernard Pertuiset, Fritz Loew and Hugo Krayenbiihl.
Thus were established the principles of European co- operation which
have been born from the European spirit, flourished in the European
Association, and have throughout been associated with this series. The
fact that the English language is well on the way to becoming the
international medium at European scientific conferences is a great asset
in terms of mutual understanding. Therefore we have decided to publish
all contributions in English, regardless of the native language of the
authors. All contributions are submitted to the entire editorial board
before publi- cation of any volume. Our series is not intended to
compete with the publications of original scientific papers in other
neurosurgical journals. Our intention is, rather, to present fields of
neurosurgery and related areas in which important recent advances have
been made. The contributions are written by specialists in the given
fields and constitute the first part of each volume.
