BELGISCHE VERENIGING VOOR NEUROCHIRURGIE SOCIETE BELGE DE NEUROCHIRURGIE

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1 Leuven, 22 december 2006 Dear members of the Belgian Society for Neurosurgery, dear friends and colleagues, At the end of 2006, we first of all express to you the season s greetings, and wish you a happy New Year 2007, success in the practice of neurosurgery, but also good health and personal happiness. Like the previous newsletters, we have decided to use English for this informative newsletter. Please do not take offence. We are writing to inform you about some activities of the BSN during the last months, and remind you about some important deadlines. - payment of subscriptions Surgical Neurology - candidates for the board elections - call for abstracts - call for candidates for the Bayer award (Bayer beurs / bourse Bayer) - volunteers for the creation of a Spine Section As you all are aware of, the Belgian Society general assembly has decided on March 18, 2006, to adopt Surgical Neurology as its official Journal. The abstracts

2 of our scientific meeting will be published, and possibly in the future, should the occasion arise, we will be able to have a supplement with Belgian contributions. This has increased the membership fee from 60 to 200 euro, but we are convinced that all Belgian neurosurgeons will benefit from this initiative. The membership fee of! 200 is not unusual, and other societies like the Vlaamse Vereniging voor Neurologie and (until recently) the Société de Neurochirurgie de Langue Française, who also have (had) a journal subscription included, are at the same level. A few members have commented on the increase in the fee, but on the other hand, many assistants in training are now joining the BSN as associate member and find the special price for SUN (156! instead of 400) very attractive. We are convinced that the benefits will largely exceed the costs. Please contact us if you are in an exceptional situation concerning this (e.g. retired, two spouses practicing neurosurgery, etc..). We hope that you have all taken the necessary action to pay your subsciption for the next year. The treasurer is working extremely hard to collect all the data to send a complete list of addresses to the editor of Surgical Neurology. If you have not yet paid, please look at the letter that was sent to you a few weeks ago, or look at the website in the chapter newsletter where copies of the letters sent to both members and non-members can be found. At the annual scientific meeting in Leuven on March 17, 2007, new boards and new presidents will have to be elected: for the scientific society, and also for the professional society (cf letter of Germain Milbouw, also posted on the website in the chapter of the newsletters). We still need some candidates.

3 Should you be interested, and willing to take an active part in organized neurosurgery, please contact the President or Secretary as soon as possible. Call for abstracts: The Annual scientific society meeting will take place for the third and last time in Leuven, Provinciehuis. The deadline for abstracts is as usual January 31, Abstracts have to be sent online through the BSN Abstract Submission Site or via the website after registration. The submission site will be active from January 2. A password will be sent to your address. Please give this information also to assistants in training who are not yet members. Since many addresses are either incorrect or are missing in the member list, we kindly ask you to send your address to both the President (Isabelle.VanHoof@uz.kuleuven.ac.be) and the Secretary (vdevos@ulb.ac.be) in order to update the database. Please note that is of utmost importance since from now on, we plan to use almost exclusively for communication with the members. The company Bayer has kindly agreed to support once again a young neurosurgeon (maximum 35 years of age) for a project that is done partly in a foreign center. Candidates have to send their application, with a cv, a description of the project in 10 pages, and a description of their projected stay in a foreign center, to prof. Levivier before January 31, Two years later, the winning project has to be presented again at the scientific meeting.

4 From several directions, we have felt the need to have a special section dedicated to the spinal column. Some of our members have proposed this, while European and international organisations have asked the BSN for an official representative in specialized meetings with possibly influence on European policy. As yet, since there is no Spine Section, we have not easily found someone who can be our official delegate. We therefore believe that work has to be started towards the creation of a spine section. This implies a lot of effort and initiative, but also respect for our democratic traditions and bylaws. After careful deliberation, we propose the following strategy. - An ad hoc working party will be created by a vote at the general meeting in March These colleagues will have one year for brainstorming and writing bylaws, and will propose their finished project at the general meeting in At the general meeting in 2008, an official section can then be created if this is the wish of the majority of members. We therefore want to ask for volunteers to start working towards the creation of a Spine Section. Of course, these colleagues who have done the work will probably also become the officially elected board of the section in As you can see, 2006 has been a very active year for the members of the Board. As president and secretary, we want to use this occasion to express our gratitude to the other board members, especially to the treasurer Bob D Haen, and to our secretaries, who are doing most of the not so interesting chores.

5 Vriendelijke groeten, salutations amicales Frank Van Calenbergh Marc Levivier