The Japan Stroke Society—the past 4 years and prospects for the future as seen by the president

Abstract

Four years ago, when I was nominated as the 4th president of the Japan Stroke Society (JSS), I put forward a list of 20 important points that I wanted to address during my presidency (Table 1). So far, eleven of them have been completely or almost completely resolved, and progress has been made on several others.
One of the most important issues was the establishment of an age-limit system, which has been a long-standing problem for the JSS. Within the next 5 years, an age-limit of 65 years will be introduced for members of the board of directors and councillors in JSS. Another milestone was the 2nd examination for JSS-verified stroke specialists : as a result, 81 new specialists were accepted, making a total of 2,540 stroke specialists in Japan. Our journals in Japanese (Nousotchuu) and in English (J Stroke CVD) are progressing very well, and J Stroke CVD will be included in the National Library of Medicine from next year. In addition, t-PA seminars were held 166 times throughout Japan, with 9,093 participants in total.
Several issues remain, including: 1) the question of publicity for stroke specialists; 2) the updating of the Guidelines for the Management of Stroke, in which the JSS is playing a key role; 3) establishment of the “brainattack” campaign committee; 4) improvement of international cooperation, particularly with Asian countries; 5) better stroke education for the general population, ambulance people, general physicians, young residents and students; 6) cooperation with other medical professionals, including scientific meetings and so on.
I hope that, with the further cooperation of the JSS members, we will soon see considerable progress in these areas too.