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Too much of a good thing: Rationalizing scientific meetings
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Scientific meetings for any specialty of medicine serve useful purposes. These meetings can:
- Act as a forum for exchange of information and experience of medical treatments.
- Provide opportunities for continued medical education and professional development for experienced doctors, trainees and allied health personnel.
- Provide opportunities for learning novel treatment modalities and technologies.
- Provide a venue for industry to introduce and display their products.
When you scan through the pages of many orthopaedic journals, newsletters, newspapers or the Internet, you’ll find a plethora of orthopaedic meetings every week, often taking place worldwide at the same time or closely following one another.
Classifying the events
There are six main meeting categories.
- General meetings representing global interests and experience, such as the Triennial World Congress of Société Internationale de Chirurgie Orthopédique et de Traumatologie;
- Major regional meetings, such as the meetings of the European Federation of Orthopaedics and Traumatology, the Asia Pacific Orthopaedic Association, and Sociedad Latino-Americana de Ortopedia Y Traumatologia;
- Meetings of national orthopaedic societies (eg, the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons);
- Specialist orthopaedic society meetings, which can encompass global, international, regional and local subgroups;
- Meetings representing interests and experience based on ethnicity, such as the Combined Meetings of the English-Speaking World and the Chinese-Speaking Orthopaedic Association; and
- Those for the interests and experience of members who have a more narrow focus of work. This includes meetings sponsored by industry to promote and gather experience in certain types of devices.
How to choose
The abundance of orthopaedic meetings poses several challenges. For the potential participant, there are perhaps several meetings that he or she feels “obliged” to attend. These include the annual meeting of their national orthopaedic society, the meetings of the specialist societies that directly affect or involve their practice (very often there is more than one subgroup), and the annual meeting of regional orthopaedic societies of which their country is an active member. There may yet be another meeting with higher educational or networking value apart from the “obligatory” ones.
The difficulty is not only to find the financial resources needed for meeting registration, but to find the time to register and attend. The oral and/or poster presentations at some of the meetings, particularly at specialist society meetings, are often duplicated elsewhere. Substantial industry sponsorship is necessary for the viability of orthopaedic meetings. The amount of sponsorship has increased throughout the years in response to the high costs accross the board. Consequently, trade exhibitors are finding it increasingly difficult to sponsor four or five similar meetings a year.
Each serves a purpose
We can reasonably argue that the categories of meetings mentioned above all serve different purposes. The SICOT meetings are the only truly global meetings, not only because they address the needs of surgeons from all corners of the globe, but also because the scientific content addresses cases, diseases, treatment modalities, health care programs, and socioeconomic patterns from different parts of the world. This addresses the most underdeveloped as well as developed parts of the world.
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Meetings representing major regions are important in that the scientific content is more appropriate to the medical problems, the state of development of medical facilities, availability of technology, the health care system and financing of health care in that region. Some diseases or disorders may be unique to a particular region: eg, the incidence of trauma and neglected trauma are likely to be more prevalent in developing countries.
Subspecialty meetings are needed, given the growing trend of specialization within the practice of orthopaedics and traumatology.
Streamlining the process
However, there has been some attempt to tackle the proliferation problem, starting with specialist societies.
I specialize in orthopaedic spine care, so I am aware of the large number of spine societies. About 5 years ago, a group of experienced spinal surgeons, mainly from Europe, tried to tackle the proliferation problem. The result was Spine Week. The organizers invited the known spine surgery specialist societies throughout world to participate in the concept. Several major spinal societies participated as “full societies,” including the International Society for the Study of the Lumbar Spine, the Spine Society of Europe, the European Cervical Spine Research Society, the Latin American Spine Society, Brazilian Spine Society, APOA Spine Section and the North American Spine Society. One of the major societies that did not participate was Scoliosis Research Society. Approximately 2,000 participants attended, with surgeons presenting nearly 300 papers in 6 days.
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The orthopaedic spine industry embraced SpineWeek, presumably because the meeting reduced the need for multiple sponsorships. Furthermore, a large number of spine surgeons attending the meeting got to visit the trade exhibition, so the companies gained greater exposure. Ultimately, the organizers felt that the concept was successful and are planning the next for Geneva in 2008.
Collaboration at all levels
The orthopaedic community can use this same sense of collaboration on a much smaller scale, too. For example, there are four British spinal societies: the British Scoliosis Society, the British Association of Spine Surgeons, the British Cervical Spine Society and the Society for Back Pain Research.
Since 1999, all four societies have united every other year at BritSpine, the United Kingdom’s version of EuroSpine. The event attracts about 200 participants and features 75 oral and 80 poster presentations. The next meeting is scheduled in Belfast in 2008.
It is hoped that these initiatives will help reduce proliferation of scientific meetings in the future.
For more information:
- John C.Y. Leong, FRCS, MCAS, is an orthopaedic spine surgeon and president of The Open University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong. He is Chairman of the Editorial Board for Orthopaedics Today International.