Message from Professor Olle Ljungqvist, Chairman of ERAS® Society Executive Committee

Dear ERAS Friends,

The year just passed, 2017 was yet another important ERAS year where ERAS and the ERAS® Society have made some major steps forward, thanks to the important contributions by many excellent ERAS colleagues others around the world.

A 5th ERAS World Congress very successfully run in Lyon, and many regional and local events were held around the world.

New guidelines in Head and Neck cancer and Breast reconstruction were published and several of the ERAS Guidelines are now available on the ERAS® Interactive Audit System and are now in use in implementation programs across the world. As this is being written, more guidelines are being finalized, and updates of older ones are under way to cover a growing range of surgical disciplines. The ERAS® Society guidelines have huge impact as shown by record high citations (Google shows more than 1000 citations for our top scoring paper, and many guidelines with several hundred citations) and many, many more are downloaded. Several published guidelines are being used on the Societies growing platform for research and development. During 2017 the ERAS® Society research support group started to be formed aiming to build an organization to use the data we are collecting around the world to gain new insights and knowledge.

A growing number of Centers of Excellence trained to run the ERAS Implementation Programs are available and starting these programs thereby moving into the second wave of ERAS implementation in several countries.   In Latin America, the ERAS LATAM Society was formed, building the basis for leading centers in a number of countries joining the ERAS® Society network. ERAS® USA held its first and very successful congress in Dallas assembling number of leading centers around the USA. Similarly, the ERAS teams in Manilla and Singapore are moving ahead in Asia with a growing interest from number of neighboring and nearby countries, as well as in Africa. There is more and more interest in joining our ERAS programs from large health care providers both in Europe, the USA and elsewhere, as well as a fast-growing interest from industry to support our work.

Given the successes and rapid growth of ERAS in a number of domains we are looking forward to the challenges of 2018 with a few highlight events already scheduled; The 6th ERAS® World Congress May 23-25 in my own home town Stockholm, Sweden. The program is outstanding and can be viewed at the website. A number of national and regional ERAS events are planned as well as a growing number of ERAS Implementation Programs. Please check with your national representative for more information.

We have a very exciting time ahead and a mission to develop further – but for now, let me wish you all the very best for the New Year and bid you all welcome to Stockholm!