Editorial
E
ight years ago, in Milano, Italy I
organized the International Joint
Meeting on Underwater and Hyperbaric
Medicine, which united the ICHM, the oldest
hyperbaric Medicine Organization in the world,
The European Committee for Hyperbaric
Medicine (ECHM) and the European
Underwater and Baromedical Society (EUBS)
in a unique scientific event, attended by an
extremely large number of delegates from
virtually all the corners of the world.
The Hyperbaric Medicine scientific community
is actually quite small worldwide. We virtually
all know one-another, by the name if not in
person. Nevertheless, and this is not entirely
surprising, our small community is divided into
groups, societies, organizations, and each one
of them is normally and faithfully "followed"
by its members and affiliates.
A collateral effect of this, not entirely positive,
is that an already small community is further
fragmented into even smaller groups; such
groups not always and effectively
communicate, with the result that a discipline
which, already has "light" political weight
within the International Medical Community,
essentially, although not exclusively, because
of its small size, speaks with different voices
and conveys different and sometimes
conflicting messages.
This only adds to the already little influence on
the decision making "rooms" of modern
medicine and impairs the possibility for
Hyperbaric Medicine to grow at the level of a
fully accepted medical specialty.
Notwithstanding the many efforts made in the
USAand in Europe, respectively by the UHMS
and the ECHM, which lead to almost
overlapping indications for the use of
Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy, there are still
OXYGEN is the Official Newsletter of the Foundation for the
International Congress on Hyperbaric Medicine.
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Spain
D. Bakker
Executive Director
The Netherlands
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China
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USA
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Member-at-large
Australia
J. Chen
Member-at-large
China
J. Feldmeier
Member-at-large
USA
M. Kawashima Member-at-large
Japan
L. Lampl
Member-at-large
Germany
F. Lind
Member-at-large
Sweden
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Fall 2004
Page 2
HBO Congress
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