Don McBride - EFAS Past-President (2020-2022)

Dear All,

We would like to thank all of you involved in our recent EFAS Congress in Edinburgh. The course had around 900 attendees and was very successful in all aspects.

Firstly, I would like to thank COFAS for an excellent session and, in particular, Mark Glazebrook for his outstanding Presidential Guest Lecture. It will live long in the memory. BOFAS provided a pre-congress course for young surgeons, which was well attended and well received. We would like to develop this further, making it a regular event before our Congress and Advanced Instructional Course. They also provided an excellent session on Saturday morning, which was informative and well received. Thank you for this contribution.

Secondly, a big thank you to the Faculty and all speakers who with great endeavor fully educated the participants with their talks. We were grateful for all your remarks and will use this feedback to make this great event even better in the future. We should particularly like to thank the Scientific Committee (Chair Manuel Monteagudo) and Education Committee (Chair Jean-luc Besse) and their members for providing an excellent programme. In addition, we look forward to working with our new Executive, Council Members and Committee Members and a big thank you to those who have left. I am sure that we shall meet again.

There were also significant contributions from our other Committees but we should particularly like to thank the Fellowship Committee (Chair Nuno Corte-Real), the Research Committee (Chair Fabian Krause) and the Foundation (Chair Victor Valderrabano) for providing the means to develop and fund our outstanding Fellowships and Prizes, presented during the meeting.

Industry was very well represented at our meeting. The Exhibition area was perfectly situated for maximum attendance during coffee and other breaks and early feedback is very encouraging. The Industry Symposia were very well attended and the EFAS members seem to have very much enjoyed these events. I would like to thank all of our sponsors, in particular, our gold and silver for their contribution and am looking forward to future successes together.

Kind regards,

Don McBride
Immediate Past President EFAS