Summary of EFSUMB Reports to the Board of Directors at WFUMB 2011, Vienna, Austria

 

EFSUMB has a membership of 19 595 members from 30 different countries and 2011 has been an active year for us under the helm of Christian Nolsøe’s Presidency. EFSUMB’s Past Hon Treasurer Ioan Sporea guarded the finances through these uncertain economic times and his financial report indicates that EFSUMB is in a stable financial position to maintain our programme of support of education, safety and publication projects if we continue to balance our budget with our income. Your continued support as EFSUMB members is vital to these projects and we need your support.

Our website www.efsumb.org is a good place to start for anyone unfamiliar with the changes afoot in EFSUMB. The statistics of the website viewing have been increasing dramatically and not just from our member countries but worldwide. The European Course Book has attracted a lot of this interest. There are currently 20 chapters online which can be accessed and downloaded by anyone. These, and other chapters, will be published in spring 2012 for sale at EUROSON 2012, Madrid, Spain and large scientific meetings in Europe. The book will be non profit making and available for purchase at a reasonable price via our website. This book in its entirety will be found on the EFSUMB Educational Portal which has recently been launched on our website. The intention is to offer educational material to anyone with access to the internet. The successful Case of the Month, Guidelines, Recommendations, teaching videos, EUROSON School presentations, and more, can all be found here.

The EFSUMB Guidelines and Recommendations on the Clinical Practice of Contrast Enhanced Ultrasound (CEUS) Update 2011 on non-hepatic applications has been published in August 2011 and will be of great value to practitioners of CEUS. The joint WFUMB and EFSUMB CEUS Guidelines on liver should be published this year in Ultraschall in der Medizin/European Journal of Ultrasound. The 2010 impact factor of the EJU is 3.260, a significant increase. The EFSUMB Newsletter is published in each issue with interviews with member society Presidents, interesting cases and information about EFSUMB Congresses. Last year’s Congress was held in August, shared with WFUMB and the Dreiländertreffen Societies and hosted by OGUM, the Austrian Society. We had world class lectures, refresher courses, practical sessions, workshops and a Pioneers’ Session which brought together the historic names in Ultrasound in a session that will live on in all our memories.

Education is at the heart of EFSUMB’s activities given the rapid changes in knowledge and practice of ultrasonography. The Education Committee (EPSC) promotes education at an international high level in English through EUROSON Schools, holding a record number of nine schools last year. Highly instructive video presentations of some of these Schools can be found on our website. In 2012 EFSUMB will be endorsing ultrasound courses in Europe that are held in the national language that are of a sufficiently high teaching standard. To sustain high professional standards in ultrasound scanning, the EPSC has worked to complete guidelines in-progress and stimulate new guidelines to be produced. The minimum training recommendations on CEUS (14) was published in 2010 and the latest add-on is a supplement to Musculoskeletal (12) on training level requirements for rheumatologists.

The Safety Committee (ECMUS) review safety related articles and existing safety statements are reviewed annually and revised as necessary. Tutorial articles designed to be teaching articles aimed at the clinical user without a background in physics can also be found on our website. Safety demonstrations and lectures are held at our annual Congress and WFUMB 2011 was no exception.

The Publications Committee continues to produce the Case of the Month which is now translated into Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, Arabic and Greek and available online. Our website viewing statistics encourages EFSUMB’s belief that the information provided is used and useful, that we are attracting new members, both individual and National Societies which all contributes to building the European ultrasound community.