Since surgery became a method of treating patients, progress in the field has been intimately associated with experimentation and serendipitous research. As in other clinical specialties advances in surgery can be considered to result from experimental attempts to increase basic knowledge and to improve technical skills. However, virtually in no other area do concepts and approaches of experimental research enter clinical routine as fast as in surgery. There are numerous examples of this. Thus, allocation of manpower and resources for surgical research can be considered particu- 1arly...

This book is dedicated to the memory of Walter Brendel, late Professor of Experimental Surgery and Chairman of the Institute for Surgical Research at the University of Munich, Germany. For 20 years Walter Brendel organized the renowned Round Table Symposium on Applied Immunology, first in Kitzbiihel and later in Axams, Austria. On the occasion of the 20th symposium in January 1989 he gathered together a number of scientists who have been leaders in the field of transplantation immunology and clinical transplantation for the past two decades. All of them had participated at previous meetings,...

Nowadays, a knowledge of the microcirculation has become essential for a thorough understanding of the mechanism of organ disorders. In Osaka on 1-2 August 1987, a conference on microcirculatory disorders was held as the Satellite Symposium of the Fourth World Congress for Microcircu- lation and to mark the tenth anniversary of the National Cardiovascular Center of Japan. It was an opportune time for such a meeting, which drew the attendance of biomedical scientists and clinicians from many different parts of the world. The pathophysiological significance of the microcirculation in ischemia...