The American Back Society experience over the past 25 years has been a fascinating adventure into a world of challenging health problems, scientific research, and a special opportunity to participate in an exchange of ideas, concepts, experiences, methods, and techniques, with distinguished and dedicated health care professionals who, collectively, have made a positive impact on the field of spinal care.

The mission of the Society has always been to improve the standard of spinal care and alleviate the suffering of so many.  We try to accomplish this by providing state of the art, clinically oriented continuing education in spinal care to the health care community.  Our
gratification comes from the positive response we have received from our attendees and registrants over these past 25 years.

Ours is a journey which we must continue.  We must never compromise our motivation to read, learn, and apply our knowledge and skills for the care of our patients.
 
Over these past 25 years and 30 ABS meetings, we have worked with over 1200 faculty, and supervised the presentation of over 1000 lectures and over 9000 practical clinical workshops, in addition to having published over 50 scientific newsletters.

We have published over 30 scientific papers, published over 12 books directly affiliated with the Society, and over 100 books through separate efforts by our faculty.

We are a society of inclusion, and we will continue to invite all those in the health care community who wish to learn and improve their knowledge and skills in spinal care.  We will continue to select only the most qualified health care professionals for our faculty presentations.

We will continue to provide an interdisciplinary forum so that we may continue to learn from each other. The majority of our faculty over these past 25 years have had teaching
appointments and affiliations with academic institutions both full time and voluntary. 

Our faculty has included many chairmen of departments and chiefs of services. We would like to offer you an excerpt from a presentation at our ABS meeting, May 12, 1988, in Orlando, Florida, by our late president, William H. Kirkaldy-Willis, M.D.

"Aristotle reminds us that it is the mark of the educated man and the proof of his culture that in every subject he looks for only as much precision as its nature permits and as its solution requires. Frills and furbelows are usually unnecessary and often expensive.

Plato tells us that the task of education is not to teach a man or woman new things but rather to bring back to their mind things that in their hearts they already knew.

One very important aspect of treating low back pain is the need for this simple education. We need to educate one another, to lead one another on, striving to make the complex simple and the difficult easy. Even though we teach that the patient is the all-important person, we often forget this in practice.

It is interesting for the surgeon in the operating room to ask students and residents, who is the most important person here? It takes a while for someone to say, "The patient." The healing comes from the doctor or therapist and patient working together. The most important factor in the restoration of health in the low back is in fact the relationship that exists between the therapist and the patient."

Dr. Kirkaldy-Willis then read to us, part of a Christmas letter written to him by a housewife and physical therapist from Northwest New England. "For some time, I have been aware that many of the patients I see not only suffer from physical ailments, but so often these ailments
are all parts of a more generalized process. The prognosis depends much more on the attitude of the patient than on the nature of the disease."

Dr. Kirkaldy-Willis concluded his presentation by stating "for the members of the American Back Society, may our work in this field become our hobby and may our hobby never become work."

I would like to add a particular special moment in my life within six months of Dr. Kirkaldy-Willis' passing, when he said to me on the phone, "Common sense is the least common of all the senses." This sage advice by Dr. Kirkaldy-Willis would at least parallel and possibly exceed some of the current published clinical guidelines available to the health care community today.

By now we not only recognize that evidence-based medicine is here, but that it has taken center stage in the spine care community. Clinically validated scientific research is necessary to learn and also apply in the care of our patients. Medicine, or health care, is also an art. Applying the proper balance, using "common sense" can bring an optimal level of spinal care to our patients, and can enhance that very special rapport between doctor and patient, which in of itself has a potential for profound healing properties.

Aubrey A. Swartz, M.D., Pharm.D.
Executive Director