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Highlights of 19th EFORT Congress show high-quality, diverse educational offerings
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Reflecting on the busy 19th EFORT Congress after having 1 week to recover, I realize the 3 days of the congress were filled with valuable scientific sessions. Even though I was nominated to be the next EFORT president during the congress, my schedule allowed me time to both join in and moderate sessions at the meeting.
High-quality scientific free paper sessions were popular again in 2018. Several excellent free papers received awards, with Victor van de Graaf and colleagues from The Netherlands winning the Orthopaedic Free Paper Award for a scientific paper entitled “Arthroscopic partial meniscectomy in the degenerative knee: Why do we still do it?” Bjarke Viberg and colleagues from Denmark won the Trauma Free Paper Award with a presentation entitled “Introduction of a restrictive blood transfusion threshold for hip fracture patients — A consecutive cohort study based on complete follow-up in national databases.”
The main theme of the congress in Barcelona was “Innovation and new technologies.” In all, 23 sessions were allocated to the main theme. There was considerable interest in two sessions in particular: “Minimally invasive treatment of thoracolumbar spine fractures,” which was held Wednesday morning and “Virtual learning environments in orthopaedics and trauma,” which was held Thursday morning.
The full-day advanced course held Thursday, 31 May on total hip and knee replacement was again a great success. More than 1,100 surgeons attended the sessions where the focus was on the difficult and complex primary hip and knee replacement, as well as revision surgery and innovations in this area. This full-day advanced course has certainly come to stay.
A total of 40 instructional lectures were given in Barcelona. The length of the lectures was reduced from 60 to 30 minutes, which provided the possibility to double-up on lectures. This was well received by the approximately 5,400 attendees at the congress. Among the best attended were sessions “Cartilage resurfacing update,” “Modern treatment of meniscal tears” and “Osteotomies round the knee: Techniques and Outcomes.”
As always, the Clinical Case Reports and Complex Case Discussions sessions were popular. This year, we had seven sessions with clinical cases that addressed the different anatomical regions and four complex case sessions. The best attended of those sessions was “Radial head fractures with elbow instability” and “Difficult adult primary THA.”
On Thursday, 30 May, Prof. João Espreguira-Mendes, MD, held an evidence-based medicine session “Acute vs. delayed ACL reconstruction,” which is an ongoing topic of discussion with many unanswered questions that need to be researched.
If you missed the EFORT Congress in Barcelona, you may still learn from what transpired in the congress sessions. Go to the EFORT website to find the entire program, as well as to access several of the presentations.
Hope to see you all again next summer in Lisbon, Portugal for another exciting EFORT Congress.
- Reference:
- www.efort.org
- For more information:
- Per Kjaersgaard-Andersen, MD, is Chief Medical Editor of Orthopaedics Today Europe. He can be reached at Orthopaedics Today Europe, 6900 Grove Rd., Thorofare, NJ 08086, USA; email: orthopedics@healio.com.
Disclosure: Kjaersgaard-Andersen reports no relevant financial disclosures.