The Asian Pacific Stroke Organization (APSO) and the Taiwan Stroke Society (TSS) are pleased to have this year’s Asia Pacific Stroke Conference (APSC) in conjunction with the annual meeting of TSS in Kaohsiung, Taiwan [1]. APSC, the flagship meeting of APSO, is held every year after receiving applications from member societies.

APSO was established through the merger of the Asia Pacific Stroke Association and Asian Stroke Forum in 2009, and sessions under the name of APSO were held at the 2010 World Stroke Conference in Seoul [2]. In 2011, APSO had the first APSC in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Since then, APSC has been held annually by member countries of the Asia-Pacific region, and it has become a major stroke academic meeting in the area.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the APSC held in the Republic of Korea in 2020 in a fully virtual format for the first time was an achievement, and the 2021 Chennai meeting in India was again successful in a hybrid form [3].

APSC 2022 will be held in a hybrid format from November 25th to 27th. We sincerely thank the organizing committee, including TSS and International Scientific Committee, for their hard work in preparation.

The main theme of APSC 2022 is “Stroke Care Reform through Collaboration and Cooperation.”

As in previous years, the academic programs include a variety of topics, including intracranial atherosclerotic diseases, small vessel disease, cardioembolism, cerebral venous thrombosis, and vascular cognitive disorders. As for the management of stroke, prehospital management, emerging/frontier stroke therapy, including thrombectomy, surgical management, rehabilitation, and stroke image, will also attract participants’ attention. In addition, the report on the stroke care status of countries in the Asia-Pacific region will help to enhance mutual understanding and strengthen cooperation and support between APSO and member states.

The Organizing Committee has received more than 100 abstracts. As in previous years, the best abstracts will be selected and rewarded in preference to the abstracts of participants in middle- and low-income countries.

More than half of the world’s population lives in the Asia-Pacific region, and stroke is still the leading cause of death. Disability after stroke is a substantial national burden. Therefore, the efforts of experts are essential for improvement. APSO is an expert organization that meets these needs, and 21 stroke societies in the Asia-Pacific region are joining as sponsoring or affiliated members [4].

One of the main goals of APSO is to promote and encourage the advancement of scientific knowledge, research, and practice in all aspects of stroke. For this purpose, various CME activities, as well as APSC, are provided. We support APSO Professors to participate as speakers at conferences in member countries. In addition, APSO provides the endorsement and promotion of academic meetings of member societies. As face-to-face contact became difficult due to the COVID-19 pandemic, APSO began regular webinars. From 2021 until recently, seven webinars have received a lot of attention; through this, we are trying to spread the latest knowledge about stroke.

Thanks to the cooperation of Karger, the abstracts were e-published in the Cerebrovascular Diseases journal from the 1st APSC. Therefore, you can find all the past abstracts in the journal or APSO website. APSO values these ties and hopes to develop them further in the future.

We are confident of the success of the APSC 2022. And the next APSC will be held in Hong Kong in November 2023, when we expect hopefully that face-to-face events will be possible. Successful APSCs every year will make academic progress and care quality improvement in the Asia-Pacific region, ultimately helping our stroke patients.

The authors would like to thank all the member countries of the APSO, the members of the organizing committee and scientific committee for the 2022 edition of the APSC, as well as all the speakers, co-chairpersons, participants, and sponsors for their support in this meeting during these unprecedented times.

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

No funding sources were required for this article.

Byung-Woo Yoon conceptualized the paper, wrote the paper, and approved the final version. Jiunn-Tay Lee, Ku-Chou Chang, Kazunori Toyoda, Jiann-Shing Jeng, and Narayanaswamy Venketasubramanian provided critical review and approved the final version.

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