Abstract
As the readership of the GSJ knows, this is the official journal of AO Spine International, and the annual meeting of AO Spine, is the Global Spine Congress. As a truly international meeting, this meeting travels around the globe, bringing the meeting to the spine practitioners around the world, making it uniquely an international meeting. This year the meeting was in the Asia-Pacific region, in Bangkok, Thailand.
The meeting was a resounding success, with close to 2000 participants and industry sponsors, gathering to interact and participate in an exchange of contemporary and novel ideas, cutting edge research, and the best practices for treating patients with spinal disorders.
The GSJ as always, was present at the meeting, and announced our annual awards. We thanked our reviewers and supporters of the journal at the meeting and announced our best reviewers and best papers for the year. We could not continue to review the massive numbers of submissions, selecting only the best for publication, without our editorial board, reviewers, and our managing editor. This was an opportunity to thank the lifeblood of our journal, and to acknowledge those who excel at supporting the journal.
GSJ held a journal club session in the theater, with highly rated articles presented by current spine fellows from major academic institutions, discussing in-depth the virtues of the studies. This was a highly attended session, which not only covered the latest concepts in spinal research with the top articles, but dissected the articles, scientific methodology, and the presentation of the data. This allowed a fantastic discussion of the science and research, but also allowed the audience to understand how to value, critically evaluate, and determine the credibility of the data, results, and conclusions.
Another GSJ session, was a symposium created in partnership with the editorial board of the journal, Neurospine. The two journals combined to present a symposium on contemporary concepts in spinal surgery, consisting of board members of each journal. Not only was this a highly attended session but represents the beginning of a collaboration between the two journals, which will lead to future collaborative educational and academic events. This unique collaboration is one of the first between two successful and impactful spine journals, and one of the first to lead to educational events. I thank the board of Neurospine, and look forward to future partnerships.
The GSJ annual board meeting was also held after the conclusion of the Global Spine Congress. The board meeting is the annual strategy session that continues to allow the GSJ to grow, present new ideas, and new academic formats. A new partnership with the AO Spine Knowledge Forums, which are the research groups of AO Spine was created. A new regular set of articles will appear in GSJ, showcasing summaries of the latest data published on a specific subject matter, allowing for our readers to have up to date concise summaries. I am looking forward to the publication of these new reviews, and trust our readership will find them extremely valuable.