AOSSM Goes Cowboy in Calgary
BY ELIZABETH VARLEY CAMP, JULY 17, 2007
Calgary was the host city for this year's AOSSM conference last week, which coincided with the Stampede, the world's largest rodeo event. No Calgary citizen seemed to be working this week; all were enjoying perfect weather, pancake breakfasts and BBQ lunches and dinners, county fairs and rodeo competitions. Cowboy hats were everywhere - in the streets and inside the conference.
On to the conference: AOSSM is the orthopedic industry's leading sports medicine association, and this event is the principal annual gathering. Seminars were held on every topic in the field: muscle injuries, arthroscopy, shoulder repair, ACL, biologics in sports medicine, upper and lower extremity, rotator cuff, elbow, meniscus, articular cartilage and foot & ankle, to name some of the broad areas covered.
Exhibitors included the biggies in sports medicine - Arthrex, Biomet Sports Medicine, DePuy Mitek, Smith & Nephew and Stryker, as well as 71 additional companies. Products and services covered in the exhibit hall included bracing, arthroscopy, biologics, ACL repair, ACI, rehab products, allograft, endoscopy and instrumentation.
A few major trends stood out to us. 1) MIS - seen most clearly in several of the ACL repair techniques and products; 2) Continuum of care strategies - partial knee replacements, resurfacing techniques and products providing interim solutions to shoulder, extremity, and knee issues, and 3) Biologics - resorbable implants, tissue matrices, and tissue and cartilage cultivation techniques.
Participants were encouraged to bring family members, with excursions including trips to the Calgary Zoo, Heritage Park (a pre-1914 recreated village on 66 acres), and a trip to Banff National Park. Sports medicine docs, a generally very fit group, enthusiastically signed up and the Banff excursion was sold out.
We look for more patient-friendly surgical techniques, with an increasing array of options, to come from the sports medicine field.
