2024 Vol. I ISAKOS President's Message

David A. Parker, MBBS, BMedSc, FRACS, AUSTRALIA

ISAKOS Newsletter   Newsletter Article 2024   Not yet rated

Dear Friends,

It seems like yesterday that we were all together in Boston, but a lot has happened in the ISAKOS world since then. As we continue to find even more ways to achieve our mission of global education in the area of arthroscopy, knee surgery and orthopaedic sports medicine, our office staff and our hundreds of committee members are doing an incredible job for our organization. I would like to start by personally thanking everyone who is giving up their time and expertise to help us in continuing this important mission. Our biennial Congress is of course our flagship event, but there is no time for rest between these meetings as we provide a continuous program of educational events and resources for our members.

Since Boston, we continue to engage with our partner societies around the world. In June, a week after our Boston meeting, we officially welcomed our first national partner society, the Japanese Sports Orthopaedic Association, at their inaugural meeting in Hiroshima, in what was a very memorable ceremony. We had an excellent symposium on Patellofemoral Pathology at the AOSSM meeting in Washington, DC in July. We have had webinars with APKASS, SLARD, IAS, ICRS, ISHA and ESSKA, and have more planned throughout 2024, including with JSOA. In the first half of the new year, we are very excited to be contributing symposia to the SLARD and ESSKA meetings, and partnering with AANA on a Specialty Day course at the AAOS meeting in San Francisco.

In September, we joined with the Aspetar clinic in Qatar to run a cadaveric skills lab in arthroscopic knee and ankle surgery. The course was sold out and had 30 surgeon attendees from 18 countries. A big thanks to Dr. Pieter D’Hooghe and his team at Aspetar for helping to put together a great experience for the attendees. In October, we joined with AOSSM to run a teaching lab on Osteotomy around the knee, at the Orthopaedic Learning Center in Chicago. This course was also sold out, attracting 50 surgeons from 17 different countries, and the feedback from the attendees at both courses was overwhelmingly positive. For the first half of 2024, ISAKOS lab courses include the IAS-IEAAF Workshop Chennai held this past January and the ISAKOS & AANA Surgical Skills Lab to be held in Miami in April.

I have personally been busy representing ISAKOS at various meetings around the world, starting with the Canadian Orthopaedic Association meeting in Calgary immediately after the Boston meeting. Since then, I attended the JSOA meeting in Hiroshima, the IFOSMA meeting in Chongqing, China, the Hong Kong Orthopaedic Association meeting, and the Australian Orthopaedic Association and Australian Knee Society meetings. It has been an absolute pleasure to participate in so many meetings around the world and catch up with so many friends and colleagues. The coming year looks like it will be equally busy, and it is always an absolute honor to represent ISAKOS.

ISAKOS continues its commitment to enhance our focus on knee arthroplasty, and plans are well underway for the second ISAKOS Knee Arthroplasty Forum (IKAF) in Kyoto, Japan in October of this year. Program chairs, Shuichi Matsuda and Sebastien Lustig, have put together a fantastic innovative program, featuring an amazing faculty of international experts as well as arthroplasty leaders from within Japan and the surrounding regions.

It will be a fantastic educational event in a wonderful historic location, and I encourage anyone with an interest in knee arthroplasty to register and join us in Kyoto.

Planning is also well underway for our biennial Congress in Munich in June of 2025. Abstract submission is now open and we encourage you to submit early at isakos.com/2025congress. All of our committee members have been working hard to provide suggestions for content at the meeting, and the Program Committee will soon be working to pick the best suggestions to create the most innovative educational experience we have ever seen. Drs. Al Getgood and Pietro Randelli are leading the Program Committee, and I am looking forward to joining Al, along with our office staff, in Munich in May (prior to the ESSKA meeting in Milan) to visit the site and connect with local partners to ensure we have the best possible experience at our meeting.

I would again like to thank all our wonderful ISAKOS committee chairs and members for their hard work to make ISAKOS the organization it is, and to our incredibly dedicated office staff who work tirelessly to keep everything running smoothly. ISAKOS exists for our members, so please send in any feedback you may have about how we can continue to make our society better.

I hope the New Year is off to a ROUSING START!