The 14th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society of Gastroenterological Surgery President Wataru Kimura Department of Gastroenterological, General, Breast & Thyroid Surgery, Yamagata University

I am pleased to announce the 14th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society of Gastroenterological Surgery (JSGS) is to be held as a part of JDDW 2016 from 3rd (Thu.) to 6th (Sun.) of November, 2016 in Kobe. It is an honor to me and I feel the weight of responsibility upon my shoulders.

The participation of JSGS in JDDW has made it possible for us to collaborate with gastroenterologists much more than before.

I have set the theme for the 14th Annual Meeting as “Where there is a will, there is a way – Yes, We Can.” This was inspired by the first line from the famous saying by Yozan Uesugi, the lord of the Yonezawa Domain (previous name for Yamagata Prefecture) in the Edo Era (1603-1868); “Where there is a will, there is a way, and if there is no will, nothing can be achieved. If nothing is achieved, it is because one does not try to achieve it”. This saying means “when people have a strong will to achieve something and act accordingly, anything will not fail. Just waiting and acting nothing will result in nothing. One cannot obtain result because he/she does not act with a strong will to achieve it”. Late President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, mentioned Yozan Uesugi as the person he respected the most among the Japanese politicians. Current US President, Barack Obama, made the phrase “Yes, we can” famous in the world.

Now that Japan has entered an aging society, about two out of three people suffer from cancer and half of them lose their lives because of the cancer. Four types of gastrointestinal cancers (stomach, large intestine, pancreas and liver) dominate among the top five types of cancer which compose main fatal cause. It goes without saying that how to fight and deal with cancer is one of the most important issues for gastrointestinal surgeons.

Six themes have been adopted namely, “pancreatic cancer”, “gastroesophageal junction cancer”, “colitic cancer”, “collaboration between endoscopy and endoscopic surgery”, “liver cancer” and “obesity treatment”, in Integrated Program which spans across surgery and internal medicine.

The JSGS’s sole program has an invited lecture by Prof. Joachim Moessner (Leipzig University) and Prof. Hans G. Beger (Ulm University), both of whom are renowned globally as pancreas disease specialists.

The conference includes a lot of interesting themes: Symposiums on “cancer of the esophagus”, “laparoscopic gastrectomy”, “intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasm (IPMN)”, “rectal cancer”, “laparoscopic surgery and robotic surgery”: Panel Discussions on “metastatic liver cancer”, “P-NET, GEP-NET”: Workshops on “biliary tract cancer”, “gastroenterology surgical anatomy”, “transverse colectomy”

In Panel Discussion, participants in the hall are encouraged to take part in the discussion by using answer pads which will make this session livelier. As President Lecture, I will deliver a lecture titled “Where there is a will, there is a way – Yes, We Can.”

We’ve been making efforts to make the 14th JSGS’s Annual Meeting of JDDW the place where surgeons will discuss how they usually deal with and overcome such things as the current topics mentioned above. We hope everyone will feel the meeting is worthwhile participating. Also, we would sincerely like to ask a lot of participations from APDW’s participants, the members of the Japanese Society of Gastroenterology, the Japan Society of Hepatology, the Japan Gastroenterological Endoscopy Society and the Japanese Society of Gastrointestinal Cancer Screening.

I would be the most delightful if all the participants could become confident enough to say “Where there is a will, there is a way – Yes, We Can” against gastroenterological cancer after this conference finishes.