Dear General Secretary, dear members of the Executive Committee, dear members of the ISL, dear colleagues and friends, it’ is a real pleasure and honour for me to assume the Presidency of our society, learned society that aggregates and shares the experiences of leading experts of lymphology of more than 50 countries.
I would like to thank the outgoing President, our friend Ningfei Liu , for her contribution and assure you that our work will be a balanced continuation of the previous one.
The Society has its own journal that is in good health, good ‘ impact factor ‘. I would encourage you to continue in contributing with your clinical experience to further increase the interest for it, from the international scientific community.
The Society has improved its website and we will try to make it even more interesting, involved and connected with the websites of national and international societies interested in Lymphology. But, even more, we will update it in a more systematic and comprehensive way.
Consensus Document, otherwise, continually updated, must be easily reached on the web because it is a very important tool for the clinicians but also for public and private health care systems. For example, recently, in Italy, we got important new rules by the Ministry of health as an advantage of people suffering from Lymphedema, inspired by the contents of the latest edition of our 2015 Consensus Document.
We must improve relations with the World Health Organization, both as regard the updating of the global epidemiological data (not renewed since 2013) and concerning the inclusion of Lipedema within the International Classification of diseases. An official request in this sense will be submitted in brief.
We will also stimulate the improvement of assistance to millions of affected people in the world, in their countries of origin. Two years ago I have been guest of our friend Ningfei Liu in China, and I realized the great welfare GAP that exists in this great country towards these patients, not so different from what observed in many other countries.
Specific surgical treatments adopted today, with different techniques, such as: high scientific-technical level, in every case are available, every year, only by a few thousand individuals worldwide, performed only in a limited number of centres.
Therapeutic protocols in lymphedema rehabilitation centers are not uniformed in the different countries, and often do not respect the indications of the Consensus Document. We will also try to cooperate with the factories, to reduce, as more as possible, costs of the elastic garments to increase benefits for the great number of patients who, in the world still cannot support economic efforts to take advantage of their positive given effects.
We have many things to do. We will make together. We will grow as the number of members and will grow, on this way, also the wealth of scientific update needed to improve future therapeutic approaches, increasingly in favour of patients ‘ quality of life. Thanks for giving me your trust. We will try to honour it, within the limits of our possibilities. See you in Argentina, in 2019. I wish you a happy return to your activities in your countries. Thanks again and thanks to Jaume Masia and Prof. Koshima for organizing this important Congress, another wonderful step in the history of our Society.
