Highlights in Surgery: Italian influence of surgical science on ISS/SIC Members

The Italian surgical community had in the past and still has today an obligation to play an important role in making the ISS/SIC the premier international society of surgeons. The influence of Italian surgical schools on the ISS/SIC during the last century was important in regard to the personalities of the members involved. It was also important for having contributed to organizing a congress in Rome in 1926 under the presidency of Professor Davide Giordano from Venice. (This Congress was characterized, from a historical viewpoint, by the assassination attempt on Mussolini.) Professor Pietro Valdoni from Rome, who was the first to perform thromboembolectomy of the pulmonary artery, was president of an ISS/SIC congress in Philadelphia in 1965. Many other well known surgeons have been involved in the life of the society such as professors who have been granted honorary fellowships in the society. They include Raffaele Bastianelli, Paride Stefanini, again Pietro Valdoni, and Vincenzo Speranza.