The time is past, when merely surgical instruments and suture materials played a dominant role in plastic surgery. New technological possibilities, advances in molecular biology, genetics and nanotechnology open new horizons in medicine, as well as in plastic surgery.
In recent years plastic surgery has undergone great changes in technologies, devices and procedures.
I hope that our meeting will be successful in defining the view of the main scientific topics in question, and in creating the consensus of the discussed problems for the next period. I know that each specialist can enrich plastic surgery with his own experience and new knowledge, and every meeting of specialists is an occasion to exchange views and experience. The meetings can not be substituted by scientific journals. Published papers are presentations without an immediate possibility to express one’s attitude and to exchange opinions between the author and the recipients. In addition, there is new knowledge presented at congresses that is not yet generally accepted.

Our meeting will be an opportunity for participants to assume an attitude towards debated topics in an easy and friendly atmosphere. I do hope that our town Bratislava will offer comfort and ideal conditions to all participants of the congress. Bratislava is situated on the both banks of the Danube, the largest Central European river and played an important role in the European history as a large intersection of roads from the south to the north and from the west to the east. In the distant past the area of Bratislava was a part of the Roman Empire.