Specialist society updates

World Orthopaedic Concern (WOC) update

Deepa Bose

WOC held its annual conference on 3rd June 2023 at the Royal College of Surgeons of England. This is the first hybrid conference we have held, kindly run by MedAll. We were proud and delighted that over 200 attendees joined us virtually from 40 low and middle income countries (LMICs) in addition to those who came in person.

The day was interesting and varied. We heard about a variety of programmes across the world, from Ukraine to South Africa, passing through Guyana, Ethiopia, Kongo, South Sudan, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Audience members –both in person and online – were very engaged, and their questions energised the presenters and the conference in general!

The BOTA session saw some strong presentations from the trainees, and this holds bright promise for future collaborations between high and low income countries.

Deborah Eastwood, President of the BOA, gave an update on how the Association is getting more involved in global orthopaedics and Phil McElnay, CEO of MedAll, showed us their vision for accessible health education for all. This has got to be the way forward. Every person in every country has the right to education and if we can do our little bit, we consider it a win.

The talks can be accessed here: https://app.medall.org/event-listings/world-orthopaedic-concern-conference-2023/content.

British Elbow and Shoulder Society (BESS) update

Steve Drew, BESS President

At our annual event this June, I succeeded Jonathan Rees as President of BESS. The event was well-received, and we were grateful to all who made it such a success. At that meeting, the hot topics session highlighted our work over the last year. Central to this was equity, diversity, and inclusion. In the last 18 months we have expanded Council, to better reflect and represent our membership. We are pleased to have formally appointed Nash Siddiqui as our EDI Lead, Aparna Viswanath as Early Career Surgeon and Joanna Winton as Early Career AHP.

These new Council members have already been very busy. Nash has founded an EDI working group and is developing our EDI statement. Aparna, along with Fiona Ashton, Education Committee Trainee, ran successful Early Career Surgeon and Trainee sessions. Joanna has been working to improve how we connect with AHPs and encourage them to join BESS. We have been working to expand our educational portfolio by building our trainee network, BESS-T, for trainee surgeons and AHPs, and developing our BESS Roadshow to provide accessible and affordable learning opportunities to AHPs. We also plan to raise our profile at other meetings, including ICSES 2023 this September, where we will run a special session in conjunction with the Irish Shoulder & Elbow Society (ISES). Later, in November, we will join ORUK to run our annual Improving Outcomes for the Shoulder & Elbow. We’ll also run our Elbow Updates Symposium in Coventry in March 2024 and our annual meeting will take place in Aberdeen in June 2024.

We continue to strengthen our support of shoulder and elbow research trials across the UK, and focus on updating our management and treatment guidelines for shoulder and elbow conditions, alongside producing new ones. We are pleased to have partnered with the RCS on a Senior Clinical Fellowship for shoulder and elbow. More details are available via the RCS website.

All of this, coupled with our transition to charity status, has ensured BESS remains a busy society and I am looking forward to my next two years promoting it.

British Indian Orthopaedic Society (BIOS) update

Sunil Garg, BIOS President

BIOS continues to work very closely with the BOA, BOTA and the Indian Orthopaedic Association (IOA) in promoting education and training. BIOS annual conference was held in Windsor on 7th and 8th July, organised by Mr Sunil Bajaj from QE Woolwich. Conference-themed innovation and recent advances was a grand success with updates on AI, machine learning and biologics. Dedicated CESR session was applauded, and in attendance were presidents from the BOA and the IOA. Other highlights from the conference were reports from fellowships organised and sponsored by BIOS, a trauma and medico-legal revalidation session and five free paper sessions. The conference ended with its unique Bollywood night of dinner and dance until midnight, when the delegates let their hair down.

BJJ (Bone & Joint Journal) will be the official publication for BIOS as an affiliated specialist society from 2023. The abstracts from BIOS annual meetings have been published in BJJ for the benefit of trainees and education for over 10 years. BIOS has so far sponsored over 50 orthopaedic surgeons from India to UK. BIOS has also pledged to support BOTA and sponsor fellows every year to travel to India at their chosen centre of excellence for trauma or subspecialty interest. BIOS has started a new research wing from 2023 with promised pumping grants to trainees. We will be delivering a ‘How I do it’ session at the BOA Annual Congress in September and at the annual conference at the Indian Orthopaedic Association annual meeting at Lucknow, India on 23rd December. BIOS has also opened a new student wing, and aims to get more medical students and trainees involved in its activities for the silver jubilee of the society at Gateshead on 5th and 6th July 2024, organised by Mr Rajesh Nanda.

British Orthopaedic Oncology Society (BOOS) update

The British Orthopaedic Oncology Society (BOOS) has had another tremendously successful year, culminating in the annual conference in Burton-on-Trent where our outgoing President, Professor Rob Ashford, handed over to our incoming President, Mr Rob Pollock (Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital). As always, the conference had a wide variety of presentations and the scientific standard of this year’s talks was probably the highest ever. We received an update on the British Orthopaedic Oncology Management audit led by the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital team, which is leading the way for patients with metastatic disease.

The Birmingham Orthopaedic Network and BOOS have developed a national audit to assess the management of patients with metastatic bone disease against the BOA and BOOS guidelines: Metastatic Bone Disease: A Guide to Good Practice. The study aims to evaluate whether the recommendations have been adopted into clinical practice and as would be expected, there is significant range across the country. We will continue to promote work in this area and the conference in 2024 in Cardiff will, for the first time, be a two-day event to ensure we have adequate time to cover all these issues.