Dear Readers of Pelviperineology,
With the first issue of the 2021, Chief Editor of Pelviperineology will be Professor Jacob Bornstein, Chairman of the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology, Galilee Medical Center - Nahariya, Israel.
Leaving the direction of the journal brings me a mixture of emotions: sadness for the abandonment of a creature that I gave birth to about ten years after my graduation, and followed for 39 years, a complete abandonment is not, really, because I commit myself to continue to assist the Chief Editor, relief because the work becomes more and more burdensome and the tasks to lead to an inclusion in the most authoritative indexes of the journal is increasingly complex, and finally confident hope for the awareness that the person who takes the leadership has the desire, the ability and the authority for a decisive improvement and a radical change in the journal’s long history.
As reported in an editorial of 2007, Pelviperineology1, albeit at the margins of the great international scientific publishing, has experienced all the phases of evolution or revolution that involved both the scientific press and the medical art of the study of functions and pelvic floor dysfunctions in all three compartments. Personally I started with the colorectal surgery and proctology, but in the 90s I perceived, thanks to contacts with the urologist at the University of Padua Walter Artibani, the need to have an integrated view of the entire pelvic floor.2,3 In the first decade of the 2000s, the contact with Bruce Farnsworth and Peter Petros opened me to the study and surgical practice of urogynecology, thus getting the feeling of becoming a pioneer surgeon in complete pelvic floor surgery after having contributed, in my thirty previous years, to the spread of proctology in Italy thanks to the foresight of the publisher Piccin who produced in many thousands of copies and in various editions my vast treatise on Coloproctology, and of an Italian company of medical devices that still exports throughout the world disposable instruments that, for the sole interest in research, I designed and helped to produce.
In recent decades, surgery of the anterior urological compartment has seen the triumph of the Integral Theory with the treatment of urinary incontinence with the slings proposed by Petros and Ulmsten, while the use of prosthetic materials has made a fundamental contribution to the correction of genital prolapses. In the colo-rectal-anal practice, the use of staplers has represented, as well as the laparoscopic approach, a revolutionary element in an almost centenary surgery, but in the strictly pelvi-proctological conditions it has raised many quite critical issues, linked above all to the commercial pressure for an expensive surgery, not infrequently abusive, and of questionable impact in a field where the knowledge of physiopathology is still inadequate to understand the clinic. As always in science however everything, as most of the above described proposed solutions, is questioned and the current debate is promising for a definitive progress, mainly for the benefit of patients.
In the editorial field with cultural, political, commercial and obviously scientific information, we have witnessed and are witnessing an evolution that seems to upset and often overwhelm bases that may initially appear stable. The epochal changes of the past that we are now aware of, correspond to personal memories made of a mixture of regret, fear and hope, similar to the feelings we experience now with the innovative proposals of the scientific media or of the new therapies.
In the last decade, the journal has had a double circulation, both in print and online on its website www.pelviperineology.org and www.pelviperineologia.it for an Italian edition. Today it counts almost exclusively on diffusion on the web. Its large indexation is a must that constitutes the main objective of the new management.
My gratitude is very great to Professor Peter Petros who in recent years has supported the journal with his encouragement, his international relations and his scientific contributions, to Doctor Maurizio Spella who created the editorial platform www.isubmit.it, essential for the global management of the journal, to the Publisher Galenos who accepted a commitment that my strength alone could no longer support and is of help in the international diffusion of Pelviperineology, and lastly, but in this moment of passing the baton certainly more important of all, towards Professor Jacob Bornstein who agreed to be Chief Editor in this challenging adventure.
It is possible that a different name may be given to the journal, emphasizing in its title, for example, the importance and interest in pelviperineal pain, one of the most important topics in pelvic floor medicine. The aging of populations and the quality of life of many elderly people who too often spend many hours of their days in dirty diapers due to fecal incontinence and find it difficult to make their voices heard because they are relegated to retirement homes, must represent a great call to the study and proposal for solutions that still sink into the mysterious systems of our body. Fecal incontinence for many reasons, some obvious, has not yet received from the scientific community the attention it deserves due to its clinical and social importance. And this should be a commitment and a responsibility for the pelviperineological science which in principle must see the person in his entirety, from the brain, to the heart, to the sphincters, and not only the latter. In this sense the collaboration is needed by the entire Editorial Board (in particular I call my colleagues colorectal surgeons and proctologists to action) and by the more active members of the ISPP, to express interest and passion for a project that continues to attract “painful” questions from patients, proposals for resources and curiosity of the most intelligent people. We must not forget that the pelvic floor represents the field of action not only for urologists, gynecologists and colorectal surgeons\proctologists, but also for many other specialists in imaging, psychology, geriatrics, rehabilitation, pharmacology, physiatry, etc. The involvement of everyone is indispensable, as in the clinical practice also for the success of the journal and for the goodness and usefulness of the fruits it can produce.
This issue of Pelviperineology reflects the multidisciplinary nature of the journal. There are innovative articles and didactic contributions in the fields of urology, gynecology, proctological surgery, diagnostic imaging, with the comment of different specialists, and this absolutely represents the mission of the journal.
