Dear Friends,

On behalf of the scientific committee I am very pleased and honored to welcome you to the International Cerebrovascular and Skull Base Workshop taking place in Roma next June (19-22 June 2008). The promoter of this Meeting is a great Teacher of Neurosurgery and of Life, Prof. Takanori Fukushima, who three years ago prompted Prof. Luigi Ferrante, Prof. Alessandro Ducati and me to organize this event. The honorary President of the Meeting is Prof. Giampaolo Cantore, a mentor of the Italian Neurosurgical Community. The workshop has the Patronage of the Italian Society of Neurosurgery and of the Roma City Hall.

The meeting program will articulate two days of lectures on the state of the art and offer discussion of current opinions on cerebrovascular and skull base surgery by an outstanding International and Italian Faculty. Invited lectures, communications, videos, and posters will be considered. A pre-conference on the BrainSuite (19 June 2008) and a temporal bone dissection course (20 June 2008) in the Sant’Andrea Hospital will precede the workshop.

We are particularly happy and proud of the great number of registrations from so many parts of the world. I hope this meeting will add another opportunity to reduce cultural, political, religious, and linguistic barriers that may exist between countries. It will be a wonderful occasion for all of us to intensify our feeling of belonging to one big family of active and enthusiastic neurosurgeons devoted to the best care of our patients and to the progress of our knowledge on cerebrovascular and skull base surgery.

As the organization of this unique event would not have been possible without the continuous help and effort of many people, I hereby wish to give them all my sincere respect and appreciation.

Finally, I recommend to all of you the special and unforgettable feelings of Rome, especially during the month of June. The Eternal City, “Roma Caput Mundi,” is a unique city worldwide because of the completely opposite styles of art and life that manage to live side by side there: the Imperial and Baroque Rome, the sophisticated and working-class Rome is waiting for you…

I wish you a pleasant stay in Roma.

Luciano Mastronardi

Scientific Secretary

Roma International Cerebrovascular and Skull Base Workshop