The Symposium on Brain Edema has been organized by the Osterreichische Arbeitsgemeinschaft fur Neuropathologie and by the Problem Commission for Neuropathology of the World Federa tion of Neurology. We would like to express our thanks to Dr. L. van Bogaert, president of the W.F.N., for his great interest in the design of this conference and for his energetic support. One of the aims ofthe Problem Commission for Neuropathology has been to contribute to the advances in various problems which are becoming ripe for elucidation by experts in different fields. The idea of the Symposium on Brain Edema has as its background a compelling necessity to elucidate this subject which is clinically so important and neuropathologic ally so poorly understood. It was hoped that this could be achieved by a multidisciplinary approach involving a variety of aspects to be discussed and correlated. Brain edema, being an abnormal cerebral condition, belongs basically to the sphere of neuropathology, but to be successful in our endeavors we had to apply neuropathology in its most modern and widest terms. By this we understand that such neuropathology includes the study of all abnormal phenomena in the nervous tissue related to the structural alterations, and by "structural" we mean not only tissual or cellular ones but also changes on ultrastructural and molecular levels. Thus we needed close and integrated coopera tion of experts in fields such as neurohistology, histochemistry, electron microscopy, neurochemistry, and neurophysiology.

This volume contains 93 papers from internationally recognized experts in the field of brain edema and brain injury. The papers include human and animal studies on edema following stroke, cerebral hemorrhage, traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury and hydrocephalus. Papers also address fluid dynamics in the brain (including the role of aquaporins).

Brain edema is a simple phenomenon – an abnormal increase of brain tissue volume by the increase of brain tissue water content. However the etiology is not simple and relating to a wide variety of neurological disorders including ischemia, trauma, tumor, hemorrhage and hydrocephalus. It is still a major cause of death in the neurological/neurosurgical ward. This volume is an up-to-date report on progress in brain edema research, diagnosis and treatment, including papers presented at the 12th International Symposium on Brain Edema and Brain Tissue Injury in 2002. Major topics include molecular biology and blood-brain barrier disorders, ischemic and traumatic brain edema, imaging and diagnosis of brain edema, treatment and radiation effect. Various papers in the rapidly growing fields of neuroimaging and molecular medicine are also included.

86 short papers originating from the 13th International Symposium on Intracranial Pressure and Brain Monitoring held in July 2007 in San Francisco present experimental as well as clinical research data on invasive and non-invasive intracranial pressure and brain biochemistry monitoring. The papers have undergone a peer-reviewing and are organized in eight sections: brain injury: ICP management and cerebral physiology; hydrocephalus and cerebrospinal fluid dynamics; advanced neuromonitoring; biomedical informatics; imaging; ICP: brain compliance, biophysics, and biomechanics; stroke, subarachnoid hemorrhage, and intracerebral hematoma; and experimental studies and models. The papers address the increasing use of decompressive craniectomy for the treatment of brain edema as well after brain injury and the rapidly expanding field of advanced neuromonitoring and neuroimaging.

This volume contains 93 papers from internationally recognized experts in the field of brain edema and brain injury. The papers include human and animal studies on edema following stroke, cerebral hemorrhage, traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury and hydrocephalus. Papers also address fluid dynamics in the brain (including the role of aquaporins).