Ladies and Gentlemen,
Dear Colleagues,
Dear Friends,

I would like to welcome all of you to the next ESMINT Congress in Nice, 6-8 September 2012.
The spirit of the Congress has always been and especially this year will be to ask ourselves a lot of questions. We should not be afraid of questions and we should be not afraid of the answers.

The 2012 Esmint congress is going to repeat the success of the previous editions. This year we really want to dedicate much more time to the discussion.
Firstly discussion of cases. Cases presented by the participants and discussed by everybody else. The main topics will be the usual: Aneurysms and Flow-diverters. AVMs and their problematic management. Stroke: the technical advancements and the latest results of Randomized Trials.
Secondly we will try to approach controversial issues. We will see if there is anything proved in the relationship between venous insufficiency and Multiple Sclerosis. And we will try to understand our role in the field of Science. Science is a big word: are we ready for that?

The most important part of the Congress will be the presentation of cases: they must be single case reports (two or three cases when a certain point has to be stressed).
They have to possess interesting features:

• bad outcomes and device failures will be privileged
• new, provocative, conflicting ideas will be favoured

We do not like presentations with case series, numbers, statistics, which show just a few images quickly disappearing.

We will make a big effort to accommodate all. We will try to favour the youngest among you and of course the first who will respond. First come, first served: the sooner you send the presentation the higher the probability of showing it.
In order to promote discussion there should be somewhere in the presentation, ideally when questions start to rise, a slide that makes a stop and permits the moderators to take charge and involve the floor. That slide can always be added later by the Scientific Committee.

With the help of you all we will make a great Congress. Once more.
Please send the presentations and see you in Nice.