Why a World Journal of Gastroenterology?

摘要

When a new medical journal is launched, the reaction is frequent: Why? Do we have already so much to read that we feel overwhelmed? But, the litmus test of a good new journal is: Does it find its way into the reading time of physicians and medical scientists? The new World Journal of Gastroenterology has the opportunity to pass that litmus test. We already have excellent journals of gastroenterology. All have originated as local publications. Some have reached an international status because of the quality of the published materials. Clear examples in the Western world are journals originated in Great Britain, Scandinavia and the United States of America. But they all keep their original flavor which permeates their published materials and reflects mostly the experience and the interest of physicians in the countries they represent. Gastroenterologists, as most clinicians, tend to draw conclusions from their own experience, which they tend to generalize to "the world". That experience represents the pattern of diseases in their community. But gastrointestinal diseases display radically different patterns in different populations. In the case of cancer, for instance, the incidence of cancers of the colon, liver, biliary system, and stomach displayed rates in some populations that were several times higher than in other populations, as regularly published and illustrated by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.