Fausto Catena MD, PhD, FRCS is currently Chief of Emergency Surgery Department, Parma University Hospital, Italy. Until 2011, he worked as Consultant General Surgeon at the Dept. of General, Emergency and Transplant Surgery of the St Orsola-Malpighi University Hospital, Bologna, Italy. He is Editor in Chief of the World Journal of Emergency Surgery, former Editor of European Surgical Research, Editor of the Open Cardiovascular And Thoracic Surgery Journal, the World Journal of Gastroenterology and many other top ranking journals as well as a Member of the Committee on Publication Ethics. He is General Secretary of the World Society of Emergency Surgery, and past President of the ESYS of the European College of Surgeons. Salomone Di Saverio MD FACS FRCS, is a Consultant Surgeon, performing elective general surgery procedures and Team Leader Consultant in Acute Care-Trauma Surgery. He is currently Clinical Head of Laparoscopy in Trauma Surgery at the Trauma Surgery Unit and Vice-Chair of the Trauma Surgery Unit, Trauma Center Maggiore Hospital Bologna. He has performed more than 2850 major surgical procedures, mainly as first operator, and many laparoscopies. He has described and published several papers on original or innovative surgical techniques in both open and laparoscopic surgery. Luca Ansaloni, MD is currently director of the General, Emergency and Trauma Surgery Dept. of Bufalini Hospital in Cesena (Italy) and Professor at the Milan University's General and Emergency Surgery Residency School. He has extensive experience in managing post-traumatic and non-post-traumatic open abdomen patients, and as a war surgeon in Africa and Afghanistan. He has authored hundreds of scientific articles and book chapters. He is past- president of the World Society of Emergency Surgery (WSES). Federico Coccolini, MD, is currently working as a general, emergency and trauma surgeon at the General, Emergency and Trauma Surgery Dept. of Bufalini Hospital in Cesena (Italy). His main fields of interest are emergency surgery, trauma surgery, trauma patient management, as well as emergency and trauma system organization and implementation, and abdominal surgery. He has published widely (more than 100 papers) and has written several book chapters, most of them as first author. i He is the main investigator of IROA (International Register of Open Abdomen), the widest multicenter cohort study on open abdomen patients ever performed, which is recruiting hundreds of patients from all around the world. Massimo Sartelli, MD, is currently a surgeon at the General Surgery department of the Hospital of Macerata, under the direction of Pr. Ivo Patrizi. He mainly performs liver surgery, gastro-intestinal surgery, colon surgery, vascular surgery, both minimally invasively and thoracoscopically. He has coauthored over 71 scientific publications.
