- Email: [email protected]
Welcome message from the ISSHP President
Pregnancy Hypertension: An International Journal of Women’s Cardiovascular Health 6 (2016) 135
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Pregnancy Hypertension: An International Journal of Women’s Cardiovascular Health journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/preghy
Welcome message from the ISSHP President Mark Brown, Professor President, ISSHP Senior Staff Nephrologist St. George Hospital & University of NSW Sydney, Australia Another ISSHP Congress has come and gone; perhaps that gives us a chance to pause and reflect on the meeting itself and on the reason why we come together every two years to discuss just one issue, namely hypertension in pregnancy. Pre-eclampsia will kill 40% as many people per year as does HIV, a figure not readily appreciated by most people. I live in Australia, a well-developed and rich country with a well advanced medical system. Yesterday I saw a young woman with early onset preeclampsia whose baby died that day following placental abruption; that will have a life-long devastating effect on that woman, her family and many of the staff involved in her case. I don’t know what it’s like to live in Africa or other parts of the world where this event, and maternal death, is so much more common. So it was indeed appropriate that ISSHP met in South America, a place where pre-eclampsia remains a major problem, to discuss this topic. Pre-eclampsia and the other hypertensive disorders of pregnancy remain enigmas. It seems illogical that new disorders can come along such as HIV and, dare I say it, Zika virus, and modern medicine is capable of unravelling their causes, effects, pathology and treatments in a sort space of time yet the causes and treatments for pre-eclampsia, a disorder well described by the ancient Greeks, remain unknown.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.preghy.2016.08.234
ISSHP has developed a plan to try to improve our knowledge and treatment for pre-eclampsia. This includes developing a single internationally agreed way of diagnosing the disorder; integrating basic science and clinical practice into our Congress meetings; disseminating research widely through the world Congress meetings such as that we have just had in Brazil and through our Journal and Newsletters; strengthening our ties with other key organisations such as ISOM and FIGO; supporting research in low & middle income countries; developing a world pre-eclampsia day; and supporting Young investigators to present their research and clinical advances, as they did in Brazil. The ISSHP congress in Brazil gave us the opportunity to showcase many of these issues, to discuss better ways to enhance our research and clinical practice, and above all to meet with friends from all parts of the world. I would like to thank all those involved in bringing together the meeting in Brazil, particularly Congress Chair Nelson Sass, Leandro Oliveira, the local organising committee, and ISSHP secretary Louise Kenny. It is again very good of Elsevier to publish the abstracts of our Congress thus providing a record of our meeting and an impetus for young researchers to continue in their endeavours to understand how we can improve the lives of so many women throughout the world. It was good to meet with so many friends again, to enjoy such collegiality and to have the opportunity to make further steps towards a better understanding and treatment of pre-eclampsia. May we take this spirit with us into our workplaces. We meet again in Amsterdam in 2018 – see you there. Mark Brown President, ISSHP
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Pregnancy Hypertension: An International Journal of Women’s Cardiovascular Health journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/preghy
Welcome message from the ISSHP President Mark Brown, Professor President, ISSHP Senior Staff Nephrologist St. George Hospital & University of NSW Sydney, Australia Another ISSHP Congress has come and gone; perhaps that gives us a chance to pause and reflect on the meeting itself and on the reason why we come together every two years to discuss just one issue, namely hypertension in pregnancy. Pre-eclampsia will kill 40% as many people per year as does HIV, a figure not readily appreciated by most people. I live in Australia, a well-developed and rich country with a well advanced medical system. Yesterday I saw a young woman with early onset preeclampsia whose baby died that day following placental abruption; that will have a life-long devastating effect on that woman, her family and many of the staff involved in her case. I don’t know what it’s like to live in Africa or other parts of the world where this event, and maternal death, is so much more common. So it was indeed appropriate that ISSHP met in South America, a place where pre-eclampsia remains a major problem, to discuss this topic. Pre-eclampsia and the other hypertensive disorders of pregnancy remain enigmas. It seems illogical that new disorders can come along such as HIV and, dare I say it, Zika virus, and modern medicine is capable of unravelling their causes, effects, pathology and treatments in a sort space of time yet the causes and treatments for pre-eclampsia, a disorder well described by the ancient Greeks, remain unknown.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.preghy.2016.08.234
ISSHP has developed a plan to try to improve our knowledge and treatment for pre-eclampsia. This includes developing a single internationally agreed way of diagnosing the disorder; integrating basic science and clinical practice into our Congress meetings; disseminating research widely through the world Congress meetings such as that we have just had in Brazil and through our Journal and Newsletters; strengthening our ties with other key organisations such as ISOM and FIGO; supporting research in low & middle income countries; developing a world pre-eclampsia day; and supporting Young investigators to present their research and clinical advances, as they did in Brazil. The ISSHP congress in Brazil gave us the opportunity to showcase many of these issues, to discuss better ways to enhance our research and clinical practice, and above all to meet with friends from all parts of the world. I would like to thank all those involved in bringing together the meeting in Brazil, particularly Congress Chair Nelson Sass, Leandro Oliveira, the local organising committee, and ISSHP secretary Louise Kenny. It is again very good of Elsevier to publish the abstracts of our Congress thus providing a record of our meeting and an impetus for young researchers to continue in their endeavours to understand how we can improve the lives of so many women throughout the world. It was good to meet with so many friends again, to enjoy such collegiality and to have the opportunity to make further steps towards a better understanding and treatment of pre-eclampsia. May we take this spirit with us into our workplaces. We meet again in Amsterdam in 2018 – see you there. Mark Brown President, ISSHP