Dear colleagues, dear friends

First at all I must here transmit to our President Toru Maruyama the support from all the members of our scientific community. People from his marvellous country have shown the rest of the world the meaning of courage, serenity, social and familiar organization, and why not to say heroism? They are and will be still suffering for a long time but I am sure that with such an attitude they will overcome all the present and future problems. Toru, please consider us, in all the sense of the word, the Allies of Japan.

It is less than two months for the 8th SOSORT Meeting in Barcelona, where we want to give you the warmest welcome.

In behalf of the President of the Scientific Committee, Dr. Tomasz Kotwicki, and all its members, I have to thank all colleagues submitting abstracts to our conference. We received a total of 111 abstracts signed by authors from 20 different countries. It is highly remarkable the contribution of our friends from Poland, submitting 20 abstracts, as well as from Italy, with 15 abstracts. Twelve abstracts from Spain and 13 from the USA are equally noticeable. Other countries contributing have been Germany, France, UK, Canada, Turkey, Egypt, Japan, Russian Federation, Greece, The Netherlands, United Arab Emirates, Israel, Hong Kong, Ukraine and Switzerland. After the successful past meetings, we still miss colleagues from many other countries but on the other hand, we must recognize that SOSORT is really growing year by year and after your big effort we must expect a very successful meeting also this year.

The meeting has been scheduled with 14 scientific sessions including 73 Oral presentations, twenty-nine Poster presentations, three Key Note Lectures and one Special Invited Lecture, where the Past President of the Scoliosis Research Society, Dr R. McCarthy will give a lecture about management of Early Onset Scoliosis. There will be, as usual, a Consensus Session chaired by Dr. Stefano Negrini and a Controversial Topic Session chaired by Dr. Theo Grivas, with the participation of our friends from Madrid, Dr. Francisco Sánchez Pérez-Grueso, and from Lyon, Dr. Jean Claude de Mauroy. Also, we will have the pleasure to hear our President Toru Maruyama in his Presidential Lecture.

All Oral presentations will be of 7 minutes, with two additional minutes for discussion, scheduled after every two, three or four presentations. You are going to receive during these days some more specific instructions about it, also about Poster presentations.

Unfortunately we had to reject 9 abstracts, mostly due to its wrong format. We are sorry for it and we still hope to meet all their authors next May in Barcelona.

Five out of 11 best abstracts were finally selected as candidates for the 2011 SOSORT AWARD, one from Canada, one from Poland and three from Italy. The price will be the free publication in ‘Scoliosis’ the journal. We must recognize here, once more, the excellent job from Theo Grivas, Chief Editor of ‘Scoliosis’. Also the abstracts from this current meeting will be published in ‘Scoliosis’ and we will give the chance to make any necessary correction before final publication.

Although the meeting is quite short and busy we still hope that you will enjoy our beautiful city of Barcelona, full of important cultural and sportive events. We are sure you will find some moments to meet old and new friends before, during and after the meeting time as well as during any of our organized social events.

Before the meeting, the Educational Committee of the SOSORT offer you the chance to attend a pre-meeting course, chaired by Josette Betanny-Saltikov and Judith Sánchez-Raya in Hospital Vall D’Hebron, Barcelona. This course has been designed to introduce schools of rehabilitation and orthopaedic treatment, which are the most representative in the SOSORT and open a cycle of courses joined to future meetings. Participants will be able to know about the different approaches in order to decide about further steps in education.

Our colleagues from Milan, the ISICO group chaired by Dr. Stefano Negrini, are already working in the organization of the next Annual Meeting. Dr Negrini will be presenting their meeting, our meeting, the last Saturday in Barcelona. I am absolutely sure that we are going to fully support Dr. Negrini, the coming President of the SOSORT, to make Milan 2012 even a more successful meeting, before we fly again to the USA in 2013, where Dr. Patrick Knott will be hosting the Annual Meeting in Chicago, probably the best city in the world to enjoy architecture.

Dr. Manuel Rigo