The International ISMISS Courses
ISMISS was founded by a group of active pioneer surgeons in the field of minimal invasive and endoscopic spinal surgery. Even before its conception in 1988 in occasion of the Bruxelles meeting, several meetings focussing on this newly evolving field were held in Japan, America and Europe. So a main goal of ISMISS was to coordinate instructional activities and internatinal exchanges. In all three continents respective meetings were inaugurated in different locations. This activites shall shortly be documented in the following sections.
The 33 International Zurich ISMISS Courses for Percutaneous Endoscopic Spinal Suregery and Complementary Techniques 1987 - 2015
The regular Zurich/Switzerland instructional courses were inaugurated with a first meeting in October 1987 by Adam Schreiber and Yoshinori Suezawa at Balgrist University Clinic in Zurich Switzerland. Until November 1991, 10 courses were given, since 1988 organized by Hansjörg Leu, having one in english language and a second in german or french langage per year. Since 1992, the courses were given once a year in Nov/Dec exclusively in english language, including now also the regular annual board meeting of ISMISS. In 1995 the location was moved to Neumünster Hospital, where the courses were changed to end of January and remained so until today. In 2005 the Zurich location was moved to Bethania hospital and again another move in 2014 to Hirslanden Hospital, stepwise improving the technical facilities. Beside the presentation of up-front technologies and clinical experience by international experts, from the beginning, beside a faculty with 50-70 presenters, a special guest lecture was integrated giving a special high-light to the courses every year. The distinguished special guest lecturers were from 1987 to 2015 the following experts:
The distinguished special guest lecturers were from 1987 to 2015 the following experts:
With this larger series of 33 courses the annual ISMISS-meetings became a wordwide recognized forum in this field. Having outgrown in recent years to a worldwide rapidely evolving society, in consequence the Board of ISMISS, it its session of Jan 29, 2015, has decided to follow in the future a triennial cycle with annual ISMISS-meeting in Asia, America and Europe. So for 2016 we expect the ISMISS annual meeting in Asia in coordination of Gun Choi, MD, Korea and Yue Zhou, MD, China.