Editorial

Table of Contents

The major item in this Newsletter you will see is publication of the Guidelines for Ultrasound Guided Breast Biopsy.

We are most indebted to three eminent colleagues who have put this together and would like to commend this to all our members involved in this work. As well as publishing this in the Journal as part of the Newsletter it will go in the Guidelines section on the web site.

The Publications Committee has just held a meeting in Copenhagen where amongst other items we discussed the web site and how it can be made even more attractive. We are going to try to change the front page regularly to highlight up coming meetings and other items of interest but also to make navigation even easier for those searching for information such as these guidelines. We also considered the draft of guidelines from the Education and Professional Standards Committee on minimum training standards. They have been working for a number of years on this subject and have now produced very detailed guidance for each area of ultrasound. These particular guidelines run to 48 pages and obviously it is not going to be possible to publish these in the Newsletter. When they have been finally ratified by the Committee they will also be published on the web site in the guideline section for all to refer to and we hope that later in the year they may be the subject of an article in the European Journal of Ultrasound itself. This is a most important area for all of us and a great attempt to establish standards to which all would subscribe making sure that patients can trust that anyone undertaking ultrasound truly has the experience necessary to undertake the examination and to report on it.

My other reason for being in Copenhagen was to give a couple of talks to the Danish Medical Ultrasound Society at its Annual Meeting. It is a great privilege to go to meetings of other societies and to learn that whilst many of the problems we face in our daily work are similar from country to country we should also appreciate how different things can be. I was made to feel most welcome by the Danes. It is very clear that they are a forward looking society, having just signed up to receive the European Journal of Ultrasound as part of their annual subscription and as a relatively small society value very much being part of wider federation of those interested in ultrasound developing links with on this occasion The British Medical Ultrasound Society and the German Society. Indeed the printed programme for the day had a report from two nurses within the society who had attended the British Medical Ultrasound Society annual Scientific Meeting last December. I am ashamed to say that my knowledge of the Danish language is such that I was unable to understand any of this but I am promised that it was most enthusiastic and having spoken to one of the nurses concerned it is clear that a visit to The British Medical Ultrasound Society Meeting in Manchester in 2005 is high on her list of priorities.

Certainly my visit was very worthwhile for all sorts of reasons and let us hope that more interchange between societies will help to further the interests of ultrasound across Europe.

David Pilling, Editor Newsletter