The increasing incidence of both chronic pancreatitis and pan creatic cancer was the primary impetus for the organization of this meeting, an additional factor being the widespread existence of pancreatic disease within Italy itself. It is well known that the treatment of chronic and particularly of acute pancreatitis is still a matter of controversy, and it seemed useful to compare our own experience with that of other centers working in the same field. Consequently, in addition to numerous Italian specialists in the field, doctors from the Federal Republic of Germany, Denmark, Great...

I have particular pleasure in introducing this publication by Gian Pietro Marzoli and Sergio Vesentini. Years ago they enthusiastically accepted my suggestion that they should take specific interest in the clinical and surgical problem of portal hypertension, and assess the proposals of surgical ex perience with regard to this debated physiopathological picture. These thanks are all the more real because in this way the school's attention remained fixed on a subject that had already attracted it profoundly from the start - with Giovanni Castiglioni and Vittorio Pettinari as heads of the...