Preface

This State of the Art Book is the 10th in the series which began back in Brussels in 1987. Since then, the State of the Art Book has become, not only a key feature of the corresponding congress, but also a vade mecum at least for the next 2 years covering cutting edge information in the fields of hemostasis and thrombosis. We have continued the more recent tradition of reproducing the text on CD-ROM as well as compiling the abstracts from each paper into the main congress abstract CDROM. Thus, the Book is both a memento of the congress but hopefully for a short time, an invaluable collation of reviews from experts in the field, until surpassed by the next State of the Art book. As always, I would appreciate feedback on any aspect of the book so that this can be passed onto the Guest Editor for 2007 thereby improving the quality of the publication. My thanks are due to the authors, without whom the issue would simply not exist, and to the reviewers, who have such a sterling job of offering excellent advice to the authors: your work is much appreciated. Finally, I would like to thank my personal assistant Donna Glase, for working so tirelessly on the book; my thanks are also due toGordon Lowe, Editor of the 2003 State of the Art Book, for his useful advice and encouragement and to Stuart Allan of Blackwell Publishing, for making the whole thing happen. I am sure the final product will be a worthy 10thAnniversary celebration: enjoy!