The symposium
Dr Ken Cutbush, with Fellows Dr Mirek Karel and Dr Wu Kang, attended the 2023 Research Symposium for the Queensland Unit for Advanced Shoulder Research (QUASR) and the ITTC Joint Biomechanics Training Centre. The symposium was held at Queensland University of Technology's Gardens Point campus in Brisbane.
Bringing the clinical and engineering sides of the programme together once a year is how the research agenda for the following year tends to get set.
What joint biomechanics research is
Biomechanics is the study of how forces act on the body and how the body's structures carry them. Applied to the shoulder it asks questions that cannot be answered from a clinic alone: how much load a repaired tendon can take before it pulls away from bone, how the position of a replacement component changes the range of movement available afterwards, how force is distributed through the socket of the shoulder blade, and which of several ways of doing the same operation holds up best under repeated loading.
Answering these questions requires engineering methods. Specimens and physical models are tested in rigs, movement is tracked and measured, and computer models are built and then checked against the physical results. The value for patients is indirect but real, because this is the work that informs implant design and the choice between competing surgical techniques. Any individual patient's treatment is decided on their own clinical assessment. Individual results vary.
Why clinicians and engineers meet formally once a year
A collaboration between a surgical unit and a university engineering group depends on each side understanding what the other needs. Surgeons bring the questions that actually matter in theatre and the clinical material to test them against. Engineers bring the measurement, modelling and testing methods that can answer those questions properly, along with the standards for how a result has to be obtained before it means anything.
Left to informal contact, that exchange tends to drift towards whichever projects are already running. A symposium puts the whole programme in one room for a day: students and research fellows present progress, results are questioned by people from both disciplines, and gaps become obvious. It is also where fellows and higher degree students get experience of presenting work to a critical audience, which is part of their training rather than an aside to it. The practical output is a set of priorities for the following year that both sides have agreed to.