Dear Colleagues!

It is a great honor for me as President of the ASAMI International to invite you to take part in the 6th Meeting of our association which will be held on 16-19 June, 2010 in Cairo, Egypt. I’d like to welcome everyone who wants to learn the Ilizarov method, who has accumulated experience or who has new ideas of its use. On this occasion, I would like to pay obeisance to the medical community and all people of Egypt. Medicine of the country of pyramids has always had a lot of fame. The doctors of the Nile valley were the first who broke the established in those times notion that magic was the principal force in medical care. It was Ancient Egypt where external fixation first appeared for fracture repair and after the centuries of evolution has become nowadays the milestone for limb lengthening techniques.

Over the course of its history, Egypt has had a great impact on the development of culture and medicine all over the world. And we appreciate much that nowadays Egyptian orthopedists have a great interest in the method of the Russian orthopedic surgeon Ilizarov and have been spreading the knowledge over the world.

I can assure you that the method has won supporters outside Russia throughout the world. Constructive possibilities of the Ilizarov frame that provide numerous mounting variants predetermined the development of effective ways and methods of treatment. The methods that are theoretically grounded have enabled to improve treatment outcomes in millions of patients. The Ilizarov method gave an impulse to design various types of external fixators but the concept of their work is based on the regularities opened by G.A. Ilizarov. No other method in traumatology and orthopaedics has evolved so much as the method of transosseous osteosynthesis. Today, the Ilizarov method has been successfully applied in angiology, neurosurgery, oncology, stomatology, arthrology and veterinary practice.

It has proven that the potential of transosseous osteosynthesis is inexhaustible. It is confirmed by new treatment technologies that are biannually presented by our colleagues at our international meetings. The Arab proverb says: “The one who is healthy has hope, the one who has hope has everything!” Let us join our efforts for improving quality of life, helping each other and remain reliable colleagues and good friends!

I am sure that the 6th International ASAMI Meeting as all previous Meetings will become a remarkable historic event for medical community as a driving force for further study and dissemination of the method as it will be held on the eve of the 90th anniversary of its CREATOR, Russian academician G.A. Ilizarov, and the 60th anniversary of the method in 2011. I wish you active participation in the forum, new experience, and friendly contacts. Only together we can overcome difficulties on the way to future progress! I wish you health, success, creativity, belief and hope!

Best regards,
Professor Vladimir I. Shevtsov
President of the International ASAMI