Letter of the President, Jaap WILLEMS
 

Dear Colleagues,

Before the summer season starts for all of us, I would like to inform you about the recent activities in our Society.
 

UPCOMING CONGRESS IN MADRID

Emilio Calvo and Samuel Antuna have worked hard with their team in organising the 22nd Congress of our Society.
The location is appropriate to welcome a large number of participants with ample congress rooms and enough facilities for the Instructional Courses andWorkshops. The social program looks very attractive. Please look at the website ofthe SECEC (www.secec.org) for more detailed information.
Next to the abstract handling through our website, with which we started last year, also the registration will be facilitated though the website, a next step in having all logistics of our Society through the website.
There were a large number of submissions, this year up to 530, out of which 110 were selected as oral lectures.
The format of e-posters worked out very well in Bruges and for this reason we continue with this way of presenting the posters: 270 e-posters were selected.
Just prior to the Congress all the abstracts as well as the e-posters will be placed on the website, enabling participating members to read their posters on their own laptop in the area of the congress facility where Wi-Fi is available.
 

CLOSED MEETING 2010

The Executive Committee has decided not to have a scientific closed meeting in 2010, while we will have the ICSES (International Conference on Shoulder and Elbow Surgery) in Edinburgh in September 2010.
However we will have SECEC social and business meetings prior to the ICSES meeting, which means, that we will have the meetings of all committees as well as the Board of Directors on Saturday 4 September 2010.

On Sunday morning, 5 September 2010, the General Assembly will be held in the Congress Centre, where on the same day the ICSES starts in the afternoon.
In the evening of the 4th September a get together with dinner will be organised for the members of SECEC and their partners.
 

UPCOMING CONGRESSES

The SECEC Congress of 2011 will be held in Lyon. For the 2012 Congress we have till now 3 candidates. Other countries are still invited to apply: during the General Assembly in Madrid we will have a short presentation of the candidates, after we will
vote for the 2012 venue.

NEWS FROM THE COMMITTEES

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE
The R and D Committee has had some meetings during the last year, during which they formed a list of potential activities. The main objective for this coming year will be the development of the SECECPEDIA, a web-based forum for all scientific data
related to shoulder and elbow pathology, with the possibilities, like the WIKIPEDIA, to build together in our society a collection of information based on consensus, e.g. scoring systems, diagnostic tools, treatment etc. The communication will get so much easier through the web, that it is worthwhile to explore these possibilities.
The Committee will continue with surveys as we had in the last year.
There has been so far no application for the 2009 research grant. The deadline is 30th June.
For the Didier Patte Prize (the best publication on shoulder or elbow in 2008/2009) only one application was received. Also for the Didier Patte Prize the deadline is 30th June.
For those who are interested, either for the prize or a research grant, please apply! Look for details on our website.
 

EDUCATION COMMITTEE
Two younger colleagues are selected to the Europe –Japan fellowship: Dr Longo from Italy and Dr Huijsmans from the Netherlands.
Dr delle Rose from Italy and Dr Bartl from Germany will travel as intra-European fellows in June this year.
Although we are happy that the number of applications for all types of fellowships is still increasing, we once more would strongly advise all members to stimulate their younger colleagues to apply for one of the fellowships: it still is a great gift of our Society, to travel along several centres, either in Europe, USA, or Japan/Korea, exchange ideas, and create life time
friendships!
The applicants for the Intra European fellowships should realise, that, although they can request to visit special Centres, the Education finally decides which centres the fellows will visit, also depending on the availability of the surgeons in the visiting centres.
Next year we will have the first combined fellowship from South Korea and Japan, where a representative of each of these countries will travel together to Europe.
Members , who are organising courses or congresses, are invited to request for sponsoring of their congress, not financially, however, if the program follows the requirements, the SECEC logo can be used, and the SECEC will advertise the course/congress on our website. It creates an opportunity to attract colleagues to your course/congress and it also aids in
spreading information about all our educational/scientific activities in Europe.
 

MEMBERSHIP COMMITTEE

The number of applications for membership is slowly increasing; the web-based application will facilitate potential members to apply. So far since the introduction of the junior and affiliate membership, we have not seen many applications of these groups. I would like to ask senior colleagues, who are training residents and fellows, to enthuse these young colleagues to apply for a junior membership, and if they work together with people, who are not an orthopaedic surgeon (engineers, biologists, physiotherapists), but interested in our Society and its activities to apply for an affiliate membership.
It should be the challenge for each National Delegate to acquire this year at least 5 new members of their country in our Society!
 

WEBSITE COMMITTEE

Recently Matthias Zumstein from Switzerland joined the website committee and the committee is now on full strength. Great work was done so far, to further improve the website by increasing more facilities for and information about our activities in our Society through the web. The committee will now work together with the R and D committee on the development of SECECPEDIA.
 

THE JOURNAL OF SHOULDER AND ELBOW SURGERY

Last winter Frank Gohlke succeeded Roger Emery as Deputy International Editor of the JSES.
Furthermore it was decided by the Board of Trustees of the Journal to extend the European membership of the Board to 2 members: next to Stephen Copeland, who is serving in the Board since 2008 we are happy, that Christian Gerber is willing to join this Board.
The number of European submissions is already considerable and we are also happy, that the time between submission and decision is still decreasing.
Bill Mallon, the Chief Editor, has asked me to inform all the members, who are willing and able to write reviews, to submit these to the Journal. While in the past all reviews were written by American colleagues, Bill shows his interest in increasing the input of the Europeans in the Journal, to start with this invitation to publish review articles.
 

FUTURE

Our Society, being a specialty Society is meeting great challenges these times: orthopaedic surgeons are, maybe at a different pace through out Europe, more and more forced to choose their field of interest at a younger age. Like in the past, where you could be a “generalist” in orthopaedic surgery, the world is rapidly changing: patients ask for a doctor, who is experienced in the problem for which he is seeking advice and they will not accept anymore a surgeon, who is performing a certain procedure 2 or 3 times a year. Also insurance companies, if we like it or not, will contract hospitals, which fulfil certain criteria.
In this new era we have the challenge as SECEC to offer education to younger colleagues, but also to stimulate scientific researches within our field throughout Europe.
In my opinion these activities can be at its best performed by a strong Specialty Society, in which we need many active members to join efforts in achieving these goals.
As promised in the previous letter we send you the 2008 SECEC/ESSSE DVD about the bony ficiency in shoulder instability.
I wish you all a nice holiday and hope to see you all in Madrid!