October 1, 2020

Dear Colleagues,

It was only a couple of years ago, when I was nominated to organize ASIASPINE 2020 in Japan. However, the COVID problem changed the whole world drastically in the last 10 months. Our ASIASPINE meeting was not the exception. Further worse, this problem is still continuing to be active, and nobody knows how long it will last.

Under this tough condition, I have been confronted to one decision-making, whether it is worth to hold this year’s meeting. The essentials of international meeting are getting together at one place and sharing knowledges and skills to our common problems in a face to face condition. And the question is whether we can simulate this condition on the virtual space.

After experiencing several preceding scientific meetings, I decided finally to have this year’s meeting as a TOTAL web conference style. This is the first trial in our meeting, and I am still not sure whether this style fits our traditional ASIASPINE meeting.

The detail will be described on the website, but simply you can stay at home/office and join the meeting by accessing to our virtual meeting site.

Although not ideal, I am trying to keep ASIASPINE meeting even under this difficult condition and transfer its tradition to the next coming conference.

I invite all of you to attend and hope to see you at this virtual meeting on November 10-11, 2020.

Makoto TANIGUCH
President
The 35th Annual Meeting of the Neurospinal Society of Japan
The 11th Asia Spine Annual Meeting

Director
Department of Neurosurgery
Tokyo Metropolitan Neurological Hospital