Asthma and Bronchial Hyperreactivity [antikvár]

I am very happy to introduce the proceedings of a very successful third congress. SEP has rapidly built up a reputation for organizing an excellent scientific congress, and our meeting in Basel was no exception and provided an excellent foundation for the future. Although our Society has many important functions, it mainly exists to facilitate the exchange of scientific ideas. The annual congress provides the main vehicle for such an exchange, and Basel gave us the opportunity to meet and discuss scientific progress. The subject of asthma proved to be a very good choice of central theme as clearly there continues to be much interest in this condition as well as in the subject of bronchial reactivity. This interest was shown by the large number of good abstracts submitted, which made our task in the Scientific Committee more difficult as we searched for ways of finding room for the majority of them. This enabled us to provide a very full programme covering the main topics which ranged from mast cells and their mediators through to asthma therapy. The wealth of information about asthma and bronchial reactivity enabled us to develop a varied and comprehensive scientific programme which alsó encompassed many other subjects of interest to members of SEP. In addition to the scientific sessions concerned with asthma, there were a number of excellent special lectures and subject reviews. These lectures provided an admirable counterpart to the originál scientific work being presented, so that a balance was struck between new information and a scholarly review of existing views. The lecturers were well chosen, so that they provided a clear account of their subject, and by linking these lectures to the scientific sessions we hoped to provide something of interest to most members in the audience.