As an addition to the European postgraduate training system for young
neurosurgeons we began to publish in 1974 this series devoted to
Advances and Technical Standards in Neurosurgery which was later
sponsored by the European Association of Neurosurgical Societies. 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 publication of any volume. Our series is not intended to compete
with the puhlicationR 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. In the second part
of each volume, we publish detailed descriptions of standard operative
procedures, furnished by experienced clinicians; in these articles the
authors describe the techniques they employ and explain the advantages,
difficulties and risks involved in the various procedures. This part is
intended primarily to assist young neurosurgeons in their postgraduate
training. However, we are convinced that it will also be useful to
experienced, fully trained neurosurgeons.