february, 2023
Hidradenitis Suppurativa (HS) is a chronic infl ammatory debilitating skin disease with a very heavy impact on quality of life. Until 2006 it has been considered an orphan disease, due to its limited knowledge and also to the great diagnostic delay. An important progress has been made in the last decade concerning its correct and earlier diagnosis and therapeutical approaches. Even though a lot has been done, there is current evidence that the measurements and the therapeutical tools are not able to fulfi l the needs of HS patients. Moreover, it is necessary to increase the centrality of the patient in clinical research to get HS patients involved in their own treatment.
We are glad and proud to welcome you in the city of Florence for the 12th Conference of the European Hidradenitis Suppurativa Foundation and to warmly welcome all the participants via web. This is the city of the Renaissance, a unique period of “rebirth” in arts, culture and science following the Middle Ages. Medicine was the guiding science of the Renaissance. In this period, empirical observation and rational therapy have become the ideals of practice and research in medicine. Paracelsus set the stage for disease causal explanation: “those who only study and treat the effects of the disease are like people who imagine they can wipe out the winter by sweeping the snow on their doorstep. It is not the snow that causes the winter, but the winter that causes the snow”. During the Renaissance, the spreading of new epidemics, the complex relationships between medicine and philosophy, and a new understanding of Galen lead to the advances in the knowledge of anatomy and the modernization of medical research driven by a new approach to science focusing on humans. Indeed, everything was built and thought according to human measure, and our aim is to re-consider the HS patient as part of a human-centered medicine.
