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 Krayenbuhl.
Thus were established the principles of European co- operation which
have been born from the European spirit, flourished in the European
Association, and have been associated throughout with this senes. The
fact that the English language is now the international medium for
communication at European scientific conferences is a great asset in
terms of mutual understanding. Therefore we have decided to publish all
contri- butions in English, regardless of the native language of the
authors. All contributions are submitted to the entire editorial board
before publication of any volume for scrutiny and suggestions for
revision. 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.
