Abstract
Introduction: The archives of The 36th Annual Meeting of Japanese Society for Vascular Surgery held in April, 2008 (CD-ROM version) were mailed to members. The new attempt made by Professor Nanao Negishi was examined from the viewpoint of message theory. Methods: The contents of Symposium 5 “Results and Problems of Regeneration Therapy / Gene Therapy” contained in the abstracts of The 36th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society for Vascular Surgery were summarized according to target diseases, treatments, indications, results, and medical safety / efficacy / problems, which were compared with the content of the archives (CD-ROM version). Results: The results of the Symposium differed greatly from the content of the abstracts. The “Chairperson’s Summaries” in the archives have the following characteristics: (1) they try to help members understand through comparison of the content of different presentations; (2) they attempt to explain differences in conclusions among different speakers in order to promote concept formation which would enable common understanding. Conclusion: The Chairperson’s Summary in the archives is not a mere record of the Annual Meeting of the Society. It performs the extremely valuable functions of increasing transparency, fulfilling accountability to society, and explaining the limitations of the possibility of medical practice, especially regarding medical lawsuits, to the legal community. It is a valuable means by which to show the real problems in medicine to society and the legal community. In addition, issues related to medical ethics and social missions were included.
