Dear ISUP Members:
We look forward to an exciting year when the society will become even more active. At the recent USCAP meeting in Houston, certain members of the ISUP participated in a Gleason grading conference. We hope that these consensus guidelines will help us all to adapt the Gleason grading system to current day practice in a more uniform manner. We are sorry that we could not involve the entire ISUP membership in this consensus conference due to space and cost constraints. As soon as the manuscript summarizing the consensus conference is finished, we will send out an advance copy of this manuscript to all ISUP members prior to its publication. Other ISUP events at the USCAP were the Saturday evening companion meeting and a cocktail party that preceded the companion meeting. Please see the attached minutes from the 2005 USCAP meeting for other ISUP news. We are trying to switch over to email as the sole means of corresponding to our members. If you change your email address, please inform one of the officers of the society.
A major addition to the Society will be the new ISUP website. Some of the features on this website include membership directory, society news, upcoming meetings, a list of genitourinary pathology fellowships, and links to other genitourinary pathology websites. In addition only members will be able to list research projects requesting collaborations from other ISUP members with similar cases. In addition, for members only there will be a weekly genitourinary pathology case presented with images, diagnosis, and a brief discussion. This website will be maintained at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Once a couple of examples of the GU case of the week are shown on the web site, it is hoped that members of the society will contribute their interesting cases and discussion so that this site will be truly representative of the practice of our membership. All a member has to do is submit to me the text and digital images by email and I can post it on the web. In addition, we will set up a mechanism whereby members can submit to the President of the society questions that they have relating to genitourinary pathology. The president will then e-mail the entire membership with this question. Any member of the society can respond. By responding to all who the email was sent to, others will be able to see when the question is adequately answered and there is no need for further responses from other members. Membership applications will also be online on the website and we hope to encourage additional recruitment to the ISUP membership with these improvements to our society.
I look forward to any additional suggestions for improving the society and thank you for supporting the ISUP.
Sincerely,
Jonathan I. Epstein, M.D.
President, International Society of Urological Pathology