EUROPEAN PRESSURE ULCER ADVISORY PANEL

Our Annual Meeting this year in Pisa, Italy, is as Gerry Bennett states in his letter in this issue, shaping up to be one of the most successful and exciting meetings in our short history. This is due to the hard work of Gerry Bennett, our Recorder, and the local organizing committee: Prof Paolo Barachini, Prof Gregorio Cervadoro, Dr Marco Romanelli and Mrs Graziana Battaglia; and backed up by support from the EPUAP Business Office.

Our membership continues to grow. The benefits of EPUAP membership include a reduction in registration fee at the annual meeting as well as receiving the EPUAP Review three times per year. Mike Clark the editor has worked hard to make this publication informative and stimulating, as can be seen by the variety of subjects covered in this issue.

The EPUAP Business Office has been involved in the co-ordinating of a number of events, particularly in the setting up of the Prevalence Study in January which has made real progress, as reported by Mike Clark in this issue. Reports on the main working groups within the EPUAP: Laboratory evaluation of support surfaces, by Alastair McLeod; Clinical evaluation of support surfaces, by Jeen Haalboom; and the Prevalence project – Minimum Data Set, by Gerrie Bours, will be given at the Pisa meeting.

We would like to make our website more interactive and would encourage people to visit the site:

http://www.epuap.org

and send their comments via e-mail to: EuropeanPressureUlcerAdvisPanel@compuserve.com  at the EPUAP Business Office.

The guidelines continue to be a great success and requests  are received daily to our office for these. 5000 Italian Guidelines have been distributed and the German and Swedish Guidelines are now in the final stages of publication. We have just heard from Elaine Pina, our Trustee from Portugal, that the EPUAP Treatment Guidelines have now been published in Portuguese.

We look forward to seeing you at Pisa at the EPUAP stand.

George Cherry
Secretary/Treasurer
EPUAP Business Office:
Wound Healing Institute, Department of Dermatology
Churchill Hospital, Old Road, Headington
Oxford, OX3 7LJ, UK
Tel: +44 (0)1865 228264    Fax: +44 (0)1865 228233
E-mail: EuropeanPressureUlcerAdvisPanel@compuserve.com