This 6th volume of OESO has the advantage to address a topic which is at the forefront of concern for all those involved with disease of the upper digestive tract: an entity inserted in the epidemiological sequence of GERD, a benign affection among the most widespread in the world, Barrett's esophagus, has become today a problem of Public Health. Its recognised propensity to degenerate has, in fact, made it one of the benign lesions of the upper digestive tract which legitimately arouses the convergent interest of clinicians, as well as those devoted to fundamental research. Large scale epidemiological studies, the development of even sharper means for early detection of the precursory signs of its degeneration, the extreme diversity of the treatments available today, all lend new perspectives to the different centres of interest of this book.