British Association for Surgery of the Knee (BASK) update

James Murray, BASK Honorary Secretary and Alasdair Santini, BASK President

BASK’s 2024 Annual Congress in May under the Presidency of Leela Biant, was a great success, with both delegates and industry enjoying the excellent facilities at Manchester Central Convention Centre. Before the conference, the Major Revision Knee Networks met to report data for NHSE – whilst this project is still in trial phase, there has been a significant change in practice with excellent uptake of this newer collaborative way of working. Additionally, BASK Executive representatives joined the ‘Power Up To Play’ team for an injury prevention event at Old Trafford (football not cricket!) with one of the Manchester United Academy teams. Please encourage all of your young sports players (patients, friends and family!) to use these resources as 10 minutes twice a week reduces injury rates by approximately 70% –www.poweruptoplay.org

BASK continues to support BOTA as the future of orthopaedics. This year, we hosted a successful ‘Best of the Best’ Top Gun-style training day at the Arthrex Academy in Birmingham. We are also investing in medical students – Kash Akhtar organised an exceptionally popular educational day in London. Thanks to the faculty for their support – stay tuned for more events!

The Lorden Trickey lecture was given by Deepak Goyal who both entertained and informed on the subject of locating the patella into the trochlea groove. A lifetime achievement award was made to Tim Wilton for his services to knee surgery and Presidential medals were awarded to Matts Brittberg, Andy Price, David Beard and Deepak Goyal.

There were novel ‘silent disco’ style industry sessions and feedback indicated these were very popular. These meetings require substantial planning, and we benefited greatly from Clockwork’s expertise and the efforts of the Executive and faculty — thank you. At the same time, our new website went live www.bask.ac.uk, thanks to Steve McDonnell, formerly Web and Media Lead, now Research Lead.

At the BOA Annual Congress, the BASK presidency handover from Leela Biant to Alasdair Santini took place, and Michael Held from Cape Town eloquently delivered the Adrian Henry lecture. BASK strengthened international relations, featuring the newly formed Pakistan Knee Society, with Umer Butt and Zeeshan Khan presenting on ACL and complex primary TKA in two insightful revalidation sessions. Additionally, the BASK Executive welcomed new members: Rahul Bhattacharyya (Web & Media), Abtin Alvand (Education), Rahul Patel (Member at Large for EDI and Administration), Mike McNicholas (Member at Large for International Links and Fellowships), Nick Kalson and Jasion Patel (Early Years). n

Dates for your diary for future BASK Spring Conferences:

2025 – Harrogate – 29th – 30th April

2026 – Glasgow – 14th – 15th April