REVIEW: ArthrexLive Surgery Knee Symposium, The Ark Conference Centre, Basingstoke
On 22 January 2016 the first ArthrexLive symposium took place in Basingstoke and was a resounding success, offering nearly 100 orthopaedic knee surgeons a day packed with information on soft tissue surgical techniques.
Intermixed with live surgery and multiple cadaveric demonstrations from the Arthrex Mobile Surgical Skills Lab, the faculty presented fascinating insights on their practice, top tips and pearls of wisdom from their experience, and opportunities for questions and debate. The audience contributed to a strong atmosphere of learning and collaboration, allowing Arthrex to continue their mission of ‘Helping Surgeons Treat Their Patients Better’.
Dr Pat Smith (Missouri, USA) started the full day by giving the audience an overview of his journey of ‘all inside’ ACL surgery and the scientific rationale behind it, offering insights gained from his past 10 years of undertaking such cases. He was followed by Dr Bertrand Sonnery-Cottet (Lyon, France) who expanded on the topic of ACL surgery to encompass the anterolateral ligament (ALL), and gave his thoughts and experiences of how he approaches treatment of these structures in sports injuries.
Dr Smith led further discussion by introducing the hot topic of ‘Where are we now with ALL?’ which led neatly onto the live surgery case, viewed by AV link, directly from theatre. Mr Adrian Wilson and Mr Mike Risebury (both North Hampshire Hospital, UK), together with the help of their theatre team, narrated their surgery on a patient with a ruptured ACL with rotational instability, answering questions from the audience. During the procedure they explained their decision protocol and demonstrated an ACL reconstruction using the ‘all inside’ technique, combined with ALL repair.
The first cadaveric demo of the morning was given by Dr Bertrand Sonnery-Cottet, who showed his preferences and techniques for tackling these common injuries, highlighting his Samba (intraligamental) ACL technique as well as ALL.
The next presentations, discussion and cadaveric demonstration were all on the topic of meniscal repair. Mr Paul Trikha (Ashford, UK) opened the floor by summarising the key options for meniscal surgery after which Mr Rob Gilbert (Wrightington, UK) gave a cadaveric demonstration and offered tips and tricks based on his clinical experience of meniscal repair, featuring both the new meniscal SpeedCinch, and the Knee Scorpion™ Suture Passer device for meniscal root repair. Mr Tim Spalding (Warwick, UK) rounded up this session with an enlightening talk on meniscal transplantation which was followed later in the afternoon by a cadaveric demonstration illustrating the technique while highlighting practical tips and tricks.
Professor Gordon Mackay (Stirling, UK) challenged the audience’s views on the options for ACL repair by presenting and giving a cadaveric demonstration on ACL repair using InternalBraceTM – always a subject to provoke discussion, leading to much agreement on the merit of this novel technique within the faculty and from many delegates.
The afternoon programme continued with as much interest and involvement as the morning, starting off with a cadaveric demonstration by Mr Wilson to illustrate the all inside PCL technique and minimally invasive Larson PLC. This prompted some interesting questions from the audience after some entertaining complications caused by maximising use of the precious cadaveric specimens.
The topics moved swiftly on as Mr Pete Thompson (Warwick, UK) discussed trochleoplasty, and Dr Smith further engaged the audience in a detailed overview of research, the use of biologics and growing evidence for PRP in the knee, and the future of his studies.
The final cadaveric demonstration of the day was of the meniscal allograft technique – Mr Spalding and Mr Thompson kept the audience enthralled until the end of the meeting programme.
