Trauma ranks first as the cause of death for persons up to age 40 and third for all age groups.

The recent past has witnessed a redefinition of the term "traumatologist," which now includes not only trauma surgeons, but emergency medicine physicians and anesthesiologists, other physician and nonphysician trauma care specialists, as well as nonclinical personnel such as epidemiologists.

In 1988, ITACCS was originally formed as a professional society to further the development of anesthesia care providers as traumatologists, to be a forum for them to share ideas and techniques for managing trauma patients, and to provide an educational framework to train and nurture trauma anesthesia/critical care specialists (TA/CCS).

Since then, ITACCS, which also operates under the names International Trauma Care and Trauma Care International, has evolved into the leading international multidisciplinary society dedicated to improving the care of trauma patients. The society is an international not-for-profit scientific foundation and professional association and is active in over 40 countries with over 1,000 members. ITACCS has a reputation for producing and sponsoring high quality educational programs and academic activities. It has unrivalled capabilities for assembling intellectual resources, marshalling multinational governmental support and concentrating international technology and information transfer to the benefit of various projects. More recently, ITACCS has focused on enhancing its capabilities as a functional orginization, operating in the "real world," through projects such as the new Developing Nations Program.

Now, ITACCS has been urged to consider expanding its scope of activities to include all disciplines involved in trauma care. This is reflected in the increasing diversity of the educational programs we are developing for the future.