On the international faculty
Dr Kenneth Cutbush joined the international faculty at the Arthroscopy Academy meeting in Mumbai in July 2016, a three-day event affiliated with ISAKOS, AANA and ESSKA.
The three societies behind it
ISAKOS is the International Society of Arthroscopy, Knee Surgery and Orthopaedic Sports Medicine, a worldwide body that sets out consensus positions on technique and classification and holds a biennial congress. AANA is the Arthroscopy Association of North America, which concentrates on arthroscopic education and runs skills courses in its own training laboratories. ESSKA is the European Society for Sports Traumatology, Knee Surgery and Arthroscopy, the equivalent European body. A meeting affiliated with all three draws its faculty from several continents, and the point of that is to put different national habits of practice side by side in front of the same audience.
The programme
The lectures covered arthroscopic and open shoulder procedures, joint injuries, and rotator cuff repair strategies. Dr Cutbush was a panellist for the case discussions, and performed live rotator cuff surgery broadcast to the lecture auditorium from KEM Hospital. He also instructed at a shoulder arthroscopy training workshop and a cadaver course.
Arthroscopy is keyhole surgery on a joint. A camera is passed into the joint through a small portal and instruments through others, so the surgeon operates while watching a screen. A cadaveric course lets surgeons practise those movements on donated human tissue, which behaves as living tissue does in a way that a plastic model cannot. It is the standard way of learning a new arthroscopic technique before performing it on a patient. Individual results vary.
Why it matters locally
Arthroscopy is not yet in widespread use across India, and this course has trained around a thousand surgeons. Teaching that reaches that number of surgeons has a different kind of effect from treating patients individually.
The training path for orthopaedic surgeons at KEM Hospital is notably demanding, which was evident in the standard of the trainees.