Journal of the Pancreas Open Access

It is with great pleasure that, together with the Board of Directors of the Italian Association for the Study of the Pancreas and the Organizing Committee of the 29th Congress of the Association, I present the Proceedings of the Congress held in Bologna in September 2005.

This is the second occasion in which the minutes of the National AISP Congress appear in JOP, the online journal which is closely related to the life of our Association and offers the opportunity of good visibility for the Association itself.

I am particularly proud that these minutes will be published only three months after the end of the Congress; the credit for this goes naturally, first of all, to the speakers who managed to steal time from their commitments in order to produce papers as interesting as those reported here. We must also give credit to the organizers of the Congress, Prof. Gullo and Dr. Pezzilli, who managed to gather and put in order the various scientific contributions. But, without the collaboration of Burioni Publishers, the editorial staff of JOP and, above all, without the essential help of Italfarmaco, this undertaking would never have taken place.

This preface is also a farewell; having been President for three years, the torch is being passed to Professor Delle Fave. It has been a great honor for me to chair the Italian Association of Pancreatology in this period, during which I tried to maintain and improve the enthusiasm and the energy which characterize our Association; the publication of the proceedings of our Congress helps to sustain these characteristics.

I wish everyone good and profitable reading.