Off to Mumbai
Looking forward to heading to Mumbai next week for the International Advanced Arthroscopy Meeting.
What arthroscopy is
Arthroscopy is keyhole surgery on a joint. A small camera called an arthroscope is passed into the joint through an incision a few millimetres across, and the surgeon works with fine instruments through further small incisions while watching the inside of the joint on a screen. In the shoulder, arthroscopic surgery is used to repair torn rotator cuff tendons, to reattach the labrum and capsule in a shoulder that keeps dislocating, to release a stiff joint and to remove inflamed or damaged tissue. Because the muscle around the joint does not have to be divided to gain access, the approach suits procedures where the structures being repaired can be reached and held through small portals. Not every shoulder problem can be treated this way, and the choice between arthroscopic and open surgery depends on the diagnosis, the anatomy and what needs to be done. Individual results vary.
What an advanced arthroscopy meeting covers
Meetings of this kind are organised for surgeons who already perform keyhole joint surgery and want to extend the range of procedures they can do arthroscopically. The programme is usually a mixture of lectures on technique, edited operative video, and case discussions in which the management of difficult problems is argued out in front of the room. Many such meetings also run a cadaveric laboratory so that the techniques shown can be practised on specimens. The emphasis falls on the harder procedures and on the points at which a technique fails, because those are the parts of an operation that written description conveys poorly.
Why these meetings are international
Arthroscopic methods develop in different centres at different rates, and a technique can be routine in one country some years before it is widely adopted in another. Meetings that draw faculty from several countries shorten that gap, since a method can be explained by the surgeons who developed it and questioned by surgeons who have reason to doubt it. Travelling to present also exposes a surgeon's own practice to colleagues who do the same operations differently, which is a useful corrective.