R. Mattassi The field of congenital vascular malformations and the unfortunate patients that s- fer from them will welcome this truly multidisciplinary international contribution to the study and treatment of a group of diseases that is gradually becoming better known, but not better liked, by the majority of our colleagues. Without question, the power of the internet with its access to world-wide medical literature, and the publication of c- plete issues of medical journals devoted to the subject of vascular malformations, have contributed to expanding knowledge and eliciting curiosity amongst physicians who some decades ago would not have wanted to deal with unusual, poorly understood and challenging diseases. A group of authors from ten different countries, experts in their respective medical and surgical specialties, who have felt the pain of the many patients afflicted with v- cular malformations, have made a combined effort to increase and update the gr- ing knowledge of these diseases. The tremendous technological advances in non - vasive as well as invasive diagnostic techniques, imaging, genetics, and therapeutic surgical and endovascular procedures, have given us new weapons with which to treat and improve the lives of many desperate patients afflicted by diseases that some years ago produced only sorrow, compassion and despair in their families and in the rare physicians who dared to tackle their problems.weiterlesen