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. This
series was first discussed 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 publication 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 spe-
cialists in the given fields and constitute the first part of each
volume.
