Election to SECEC
Dr Kenneth Cutbush has been elected a member of the European Society for Surgery of the Shoulder and the Elbow (SECEC), and appointed a Corresponding Member at the society's General Assembly in Milan in September 2015.
What SECEC is
The European Society for Surgery of the Shoulder and the Elbow, known by the initials SECEC from its French name, is the European specialist society for surgeons whose practice is confined to the shoulder and the elbow. It holds a congress at which members present research and discuss difficult cases, and it supports education and research within the subspecialty. A good deal of the technique and many of the classification systems now in routine use in shoulder surgery were first described and argued over at European meetings of this kind.
What membership of a specialist society involves
Admission to a society of this kind is by election rather than by application alone, and members are expected to contribute, whether by presenting work, reviewing the work of others, or serving on committees and faculty. Societies with an international reach commonly maintain a membership category for surgeons who practise outside their own region, which is how a subspecialty keeps its discussion from becoming purely continental.
Why international membership is useful in practice
Shoulder surgery is a small subspecialty, and the number of surgeons worldwide who regularly deal with the harder problems within it, such as revision joint replacement or instability after several failed operations, is not large. Belonging to the European, Asia Pacific and Australian societies means a surgeon can put a difficult case to colleagues who have seen the same problem, and can hear what is being tried well before it reaches the journals, since a congress presentation generally precedes publication by a year or more.
It also works in the other direction. Australian practice, and in particular the long running data held in the Australian joint replacement registry, is of interest to European colleagues, and an exchange of this kind is more useful when it runs both ways. Individual results vary, and techniques debated at international meetings are weighed case by case before they are adopted.
Related information
See also our post on the SECEC-ESSSE Congress e-poster, and our research and publications pages.