47th Annual Meeting Percivall Pott Club
Professor Brownson has recently returned from the 47th Annual Scientific Meeting of the Percivall Pott Club. The Percivall Pott Club held its inaugural meeting at St Bartholomew’s Hospital on 3rd November 1973 and is named after the famous 18th century London surgeon of that name.
Its members and alumni are formed by doctors who have or who are part of the Pervicall Pott’s surgical rotation which includes St Bartholomew’s Hospital, the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital, the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital and the Royal London Hospital.
The Club was formed to provide an opportunity for past and present trainees to meet both socially and professionally and an annual meeting forms part of the educational programme.
This year, the invited guest speakers were Professor Brownson, who gave a presentation on shoulder instability and Professor James Chang, Chief of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at Stanford University Medical Centre, San Francisco. Professor Chang gave a presentation on hand surgery.
Professor Brigitte Scamell, Professor of Orthopaedic Sciences, University of Nottingham gave a presentation on ‘Pain Management in Orthopaedics’ and Professor Kenneth Egol, Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery, New York University Langone gave a presentation on the ‘Management of Tibial Plafond Fractures’.
The images below include the faculty visiting the Royal London Hospital Air Ambulance as part of the first day of the meeting which involved registrar case presentations. The second photo is Professor Brownson, Professor Chang and Professor Egol with Mr Prim Achan, Orthopaedic Programme Director for the Percivall Pott rotation.
The meeting was held in the spectacular setting of the Ironmongers hall which is a Tudor style and was opened in 1925.
Mr Brownson appointed as an Honorary Clinical Professor
Mr Brownson has recently been appointed as an Honorary Clinical Professor in the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences at the University of Liverpool.
Mr Brownson was awarded the title in recognition of his national and international standing as a Shoulder and Elbow Surgeon and in addition, to facilitate his ongoing research into aircraft passenger safety and the passenger brace position.
Mr Brownson has taken up his appointment with immediate effect and will work with the University to develop a cohesive research programme related to his aircraft research and, in addition, will be working with the University to develop educational courses in the field of sports medicine.
Looking forwarding to being part of an incredible team of presenters at the upcoming 2nd Shoulder Rehabilitation Course being held at Liverpool Hope University on Friday 29th and Saturday 30th November.
‘Frozen Shoulders and Hot Elbows’ will be the title of my presentation as part of the event title ‘Sporting Shoulder – New Discoveries and Future Directions.’
Welcome to new BESS President Professor Rangan
I would like to express my gratitude to the team at the British Elbow and Shoulder Society for their support and commitment during my term as President.
It has been an unbelievable honour to serve in the role and I am delighted to pass over the reigns to Professor Rangan, shoulder surgeon at the James Cook University Hospital in Middlesborough. Professor Rangan also Chairs the Research Committee for the British Orthopaedic Association and moves from his current role as Vice President for BESS to President for the coming year.
British Shoulder and Elbow Society Annual Conference 2019
Mr Brownson will be attending the forthcoming annual conference of the British Elbow and Shoulder Society which this year will be held in Harrogate.
The conference will include an Instructional course on the theme of Sports Injuries.
Mr Brownson will be presenting on the management of traumatic anterior shoulder instability. In addition he will be presenting on the management of atraumatic shoulder instability following publication of the recent BESS guidelines on this topic, for which he was one of the authors.
This will be Mr Brownson’s last conference as President of the Society. He has invited as his guest speaker his good friend and colleague Dr Brian Busconi, who is the Team Physician for the Boston Red Sox baseball team.
At the conference Mr Brownson will be giving a review of the recent visit of the Copeland fellows to India. As a consequence of their visit links have been strengthened between the British Elbow and Shoulder Society and the Shoulder and Elbow Society of India.
Mr Brownson together with his colleagues Dr Ashish Babhulkar (Pune, India) and Mr Ram Chidambaram (Chennai, India) have worked to establish an exchange fellowship between the two societies which will begin next year and in addition the Shoulder and Elbow Society of India will become an affiliated society of the British Elbow and Shoulder Society with representation on the editorial board of the Shoulder and Elbow journal.
Below is a picture of Mr Brownson presenting with Mr Ram Chidambaram the current President of the Shoulder and Elbow Society India.
Mr Brownson attends the Arthroscopy Association of North America (AANA) representing the British Elbow and Shoulder Society.
Mr Brownson has recently returned from the annual meeting of the Arthroscopy Association of North America. Mr Brownson has been a member of the AANA for several years and he was invited to attend this meeting as the President of the British Elbow and Shoulder Society.
The meeting was held in Orlando from 2nd May – 4th May 2019. Mr Brownson attended lectures on a wide range of arthroscopic topics and took part in discussion groups as well as moderating live surgery. The live surgery was a rotator cuff repair performed by Dr Mark Mighell at the Florida Hospital Carrollwood.
Mr Brownson with the President of AANA, Dr Louis McIntyre (far right), The Program Chair, Dr John Kelly ( far left) and the other International Presidents being introduced at the start of the meeting.
BESS Copeland Travelling Fellowship to India 2019
As President of the British Elbow and Shoulder Society, I have returned recently from a 16 day tour of India.
The Copeland Fellowship was established following the death of Mr Steve Copeland, a founding member of the British Elbow and Shoulder Society, a past President and my good friend.
The fellowship is an aspirational international fellowship aimed at members of the Society who have an established or emerging national/international reputation.
The fellowship requires successful applicants to travel with the President of the Society at some pint in his/her 2-year tenure, to promote the Society and our Shoulder and Elbow Journal. In addition, the Fellows act as ambassadors for the Society helping to develop international links.
India was an obvious choice of destination as there is much common ground between orthopaedics in India and the United Kingdom. Long established links have resulted in many Indian surgeons acquiring their specialist orthopaedic training in the United Kingdom and this is particularly the case in Liverpool.
As President, I was accompanied by Mr Mark Falworth (Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital Stanmore), Mr Cormac Kelly (Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon at the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Hospital Oswestry), Mr Vijay Bhalaik (Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon at Arrowe Park Hospital Liverpool) and Mr Marcus Bateman (Specialist Physiotherapist at The Royal Derby Infirmary) as well as my wife, Georgina and Mr Kelly’s wife, Ann.
We departed the United Kingdom on 27 February 2019, arriving at our hotel in Delhi at 5am on 28 February 2019.
I believe that we all managed around 3 hours of sleep before we were collected at 8:30am by Dr Matthew Varghese. This early start and long day was the harbinger of things to come, as the pace was relentless throughout our visit.
Dr Varghese is the medical director at St Stephens Hospital in Delhi. Dr Varghese runs India’s only polio ward. Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, recently wrote about Dr Varghese in his blog – Gates’ Notes, calling him one of the five persons in the world who he thinks is a real life hero.
Dr Varghese is highly respected both nationally and internationally and as a result of his standing he was able to arrange a personal invitation for the BESS Copeland Fellows to take tea at the Indian President’s Palace in Delhi. As part of the invitation, the fellows were afforded a private tour of the palace and its grounds.
Dr Varghese and his colleague’s hosted dinner on the first night and the following morning saw an early start and an interesting ride on the Delhi subway system from our hotel to St Stephens Hospital.
The subway system is surprisingly modern and outside of rush hour to be recommended.
Dr Varghese greeted us at St Stephens Hospital and we began with a tour of the hospital and the orthopaedic wards. During the visit, we saw a wide variety of orthopaedic conditions and all of the fellows were humbled by the high quality of the work being carried out by Dr Varghese and his colleagues, as well as the complexity of the surgery involved, particularly in view of the number of severe trauma cases and longstanding polio cases.
After the ward round we joined our first Conference to which orthopaedic surgeons from the Delhi region had been invited. There were presentations from both the Indian and UK teams.
Mr Brownson gave a presentation on the management of shoulder instability in athletes.
The meeting concluded with Mr Brownson presenting Dr Varghese with a certificate to mark the joint meeting of the British Elbow and Shoulder Society with St Stephens Hospital.
After our visit to St Stephens we travelled across the City to our second Conference. From 1 March to 4 March 2019, the Copeland Fellows participated in a joint meeting with the International Society for Knowledge for Surgeons on Arthroscopy and Arthroplasty (ISKSAA). ISKSAA has a membership of over 1500 surgeons, specialising in orthopaedic surgery. This was the 13th international congress and was held in collaboration with the BESS Copeland Fellows and the Shoulder and Elbow Society of India.
The meeting attracted over 400 delegates. There were three parallel sessions running throughout the two days.
Dr Pushpinder Bajaj, ISKSAA President, and Dr Lalit Maini, ISKSAA Chairman opened the meeting. Mr Brownson was invited to initiate the meeting by lighting the ceremonial candle before he gave a presentation introducing the Copeland Fellows.
During the meeting, there was a combination of lectures, live surgery demonstrations, re-live surgery demonstrations, as well as discussion groups.
Mr Brownson presented on the ‘BESS Guidelines for the Management of Traumatic Shoulder Dislocation’. He gave further lectures on ‘When and How to do a SLAP Repair’ as well as presenting re-live surgery videos on arthroscopic Bankart repair and superior capsular reconstruction for massive rotator cuff tears. In addition, he took part in various case discussions as part of an expert panel.
The meeting concluded with presentations of commemorative certificates to Dr Bajaj, Dr Maini and Dr Easwaran.
After completing our presentations at the 13th International Congress of ISKSAA, the fellows took the opportunity to visit Agra and the Taj Mahal. Travelling involved a train journey to Agra before returning to Delhi by road on the following day.
Our next journey involved a flight to Aurangabad. From our base in Aurangabad, we visited two world heritage sites, the first being the Buddhist temples and cave paintings at Ajanta before driving to Pune the following day, stopping off on the way at the rock temple/cave complex in Ellora.
The cave paintings in Ajanta were carried out in approximately the second century BCE and show a complexity, in terms of depth of perspective and realism that was not seen in European art until the 16/17th century.
The temple at Ellora is a remarkable feat of human achievement, as it is a monolith temple, carved out of the solid granite mountainside using only hand chisels in approximately 600-1000 CE.
In Pune, we attended our third conference which was the first joint BESS /SESI (British Elbow and Shoulder Society and Shoulder and Elbow Society India) meeting and it focused on shoulder and elbow arthroplasty. The meeting was held over two days and involved presentations from both Indian surgeons as well as the Copeland Fellows. The whole breadth of shoulder and elbow arthroplasty was covered.
The meeting was hosted by Dr Ashish Babhulkar a founding member of SESI and its first President who now works at the Deenanth Mangeshkar Super speciality Hospital where the meeting was based.
Mr Brownson once again introduced the Copeland Fellows and the idea of the Copeland Fellowship to the audience before presenting on the long-term results of The Equinoxe Shoulder Arthroplasty, as well as the structuring and maintaining of shoulder arthroplasty register.
There were several case based discussions on the management of elbow pathology, as well as a debate on the management of proximal humeral fractures centred around the BESS supported ProPHER study, published in The Journal of the America Medical Association in 2015.
During the meeting, Mr Brownson presented a Presidential medal to Mr Ashish Babhulkar, founding member and first president of the Shoulder and Elbow Society of India. The medal was based on the British Elbow and Shoulder Society Presidential medal and was a gift from the members of the British Elbow and Shoulder Society to the Shoulder and Elbow Society of India and was given in the spirit of “Learning together”.
Dr Babhulkar then presented the medal to the current SESI President Dr Ram Chidambaram.
SESI is a relatively new but rapidly growing society and it is hoped that soon the Shoulder and Elbow Society of India will become affiliated to the British Elbow and Shoulder Society to further strengthen our links.
After the conclusion of the meeting in Pune, the Fellows caught an internal flight to the city of Chennai (Madras). The meeting in Chennai was held in association with the indo-British health initiative and the MIOT International Hospital. This was a two-day meeting focusing particularly on elbow pathology and unusually, for a meeting in India, it was held during the week (most meetings are held during the weekends, in order to limit surgeon’s time away from clinic and the operating theatres).
The meeting was very well attended with over 350 delegates.
The meeting began with a presentation by the British Deputy High Commissioner (Mr Jeremy Pilmore-Bedford), during which time he unveiled the British Elbow and Shoulder Guidelines produced by the British Elbow and Shoulder Society, specifically to coincide with the Copland Fellows visit to India. The Indo British Health Initaitive were represented by Dr Prithvi Mohandas (Founder and secretary IBHI).The guidelines contained the BESS care pathways and procedure guidelines for common shoulder and elbow conditions. The meeting was attended by the national press and photographs of the opening ceremony appeared in several Indian national daily newspapers.
During the meeting, Mr Brownson took part in various case discussions, as well as giving presentations on the British Elbow and Shoulder Society guidelines for the management of traumatic shoulder instability, as well as the British Elbow and Shoulder surgical procedure guidelines on elbow arthroplasty.
At the conclusion of the meeting, Mr Brownson was honoured to be awarded lifelong honorary membership of the Shoulder and Elbow Society India by Dr Ram Chidambaram in recognition for his work in bringing the Copeland Fellows to India and his work to develop links between the Shoulder and Elbow Society of Indian and the British Elbow and Shoulder Society.
The visit to India was highly enjoyable if somewhat arduous, in that each of the Copeland Fellows was required to prepare approximately 15 presentations relevant to the field of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery, as well as taking part in all the relevant discussion groups and expert panels.
The Fellows were humbled by the generosity of their Indian colleagues, as well as by the high quality of the meetings attended.
The Fellows left India with huge respect for the Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons in India, particularly taking into account the often late presentation of patients.
It is hoped that this visit will strengthen the relationships between Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons in Britain and India and will lead to further joint projects and meetings.
BESS Patient Pathways released to SESI
The British Elbow and Shoulder Society’s (BESS) Patient Care Pathways, which are surgical procedure guidelines for conditions involving the shoulder and elbow, was released for members of the Shoulder and Elbow Society of India (SESI).
Jeremy Pilmore-Bedford, British Deputy High Commissioner (Chennai), released the guidelines during the ‘IBHI-Elbow Conclave 2019’ conducted at MIOT International on Tuesday. Prithvi Mohandas, managing director of MIOT International, and Peter Brownson, president of BESS, were present.
“BESS developed the guidelines by collecting available evidence and conducting trials. Now, they have agreed to us using their content, and we have released a booklet on the guidelines,” Ram Chidambaram, director, MIOT Centre for Sports Medicine, Shoulder and Upper Limb Surgery and president of Shoulder and Elbow Society of India (SESI), told reporters. SESI has 300 orthopaedicians across the country as its members.
The collaboration with BESS would help in bringing in advancements in the field, knowledge sharing, exchange of ideas, research and support, Mr. Chidambaram said, adding: “The guidelines will help in practising transparent medicine.”
The Elbow Conclave was organised by the Indo-British Health Initiative in association with BESS and SESI focussed on specialities in orthopaedics.
BESS visit to the Shoulder and Elbow Society of India
Under the guidance of current BESS (British Elbow and Shoulder Society) Mr Peter Brownson, three Surgeon members and one AHP member will travel to India next month as part of the Copeland fellowship, an initiative set up in memory of a founding member of BESS, Mr Steve Copeland.
In Delhi, the fellows will take part in a combined meeting with the International Society for Knowledge for Surgeons on Arthroscopy and Arthroplasty (ISKSAA). The theme of this meeting will be sports injuries and trauma of the shoulder and elbow. In Pune, the fellows will take part in a meeting organised by the Shoulder and Elbow Society of India (SESI). The theme will be arthroplasty of the shoulder and elbow.
Boston Shoulder and Sports Injury Symposium 1-3 November 2018
Recently, Mr Brownson was invited as an international guest speaker at the Boston Shoulder and Sports Injury Symposium. This prestigious course has been running for approximately 20 years and has an international reputation.
Mr Brownson was asked to present on the management of shoulder instability in elite athletes. In addition, he took part in expert panel discussions relating to athletes sustaining SLAP tears and rotator cuff injuries.
Mr Brownson was happy to be reunited with some of his colleagues from the United States including his friend Dr John Richmond, who first visited Mr Brownson to take part in the Liverpool Advanced Shoulder Arthroscopy Course nearly 20 years ago and Dr Brian Busconi who is one of the Team Physicians for the Red Socks baseball team.
