This issue accompanies the Society's Autumn meeting hosted by the unit in Coventry and thus hosts the abstracts of that meeting – to be found towards the beginning of the issue.
The issue contains another biographical sketch – from an individual who was, albeit very briefly, one of my trainers and to my memory a character! (also as you will see from the sketch a distinguished neurosurgeon, and past President of the society). I do hope our current regimens have not bred out of neuroscience, those with more to offer than just the science, and continue to make readership interesting.
The journal continues to contain a healthy submission rate of articles, and the impact factor has advanced slightly – and this despite a policy of continuing to try to find a place for case reports and technical notes and their negative effect on impact factor. For those interested, there are a number of strategies to ‘improve an impact factor’ one of which is avoiding this type of article. However, this type of article does offer the early author (or submitter) a testing ground for publications, and it has seemed important to this editor for a society journal to continue to offer such an opportunity. Having said this, the threshold for acceptance of publication on competitive grounds given the number of case reports submitted has had to rise with the increasing number of submissions, so I hope submitting authors will understand this. Perhaps, here I should advise that rarity alone is seldom enough to make a submission competitive for publication. Submissions contain phrases such as “this is the first case of… reported”. The statement is difficult to prove and is not really valid once it starts referring to the microtype of a condition. Hence, there has should be– and it is in the instructions to authors for this type of submission – some novelty beyond rarity.
Perhaps allied to the theme of publications early in a career are two articles regarding the early experience of individuals in neurosurgery – interestingly considering the issue at undergraduate level. Does this represent an earlier start to sub-specialisation in a career? If so, is it a good thing? One positive from these submissions is that recruitment to the speciality of neurosurgery does not seem to be a problem. There is a whole debate on the subject of sub- specialisation. There are questions regarding concepts such as to what extreme should this happen; when in a career should this happen; and what general education is required first. It may be that a longer-term product of the national audit of outcomes may answer some of these questions.
One other facet of this that may have been ignored is that sub-specialities change, develop and new ones are created. For example, vascular neurosurgery – over as short time as the last 10 years – has seen a major shift from open surgery to neuro-interventional treatment for aneurysm. There may be arguments of the extent to which this has happened, or to what extent is desirable, but none can doubt the fact of the change. This changes massively the skill set needed by physicians to treat the condition. So what next is the major change to come, and how quick will this be? As a candidate, I would like to put forward functional restoration techniques, meaning the use of stem cell technology or brain–machine interface technologies, and to add to this interfaces into the spinal cord to restore walking. The reader should be aware that these suggestions are not science fiction, but have all been tried. A second area may be the use of ever more minimally invasive technologies – looking into the future, is the date of demise of the open craniotomy in sight? Ten years ago, this statement would have been viewed as ludicrous, but perhaps not so today.
Following the abstracts and the biography, the main part of the journal occurs, which as usual I hope is enjoyable. There is no particular theme to the articles, though despite what has been said above regarding case reports, you will find that original articles predominate.
Paul Eldridge
Editor-in-Chief
Announcement
As this edition goes to press, the journal notes with sadness the death of Mr Sam Galbraith – remembered here above all for his contribution to neurosurgery, of course in Glasgow.