May 2021

Dear EHS Members & Friends, 

All roads lead to Lille!

It’s a bumpy road and undoubtedly full of ups and downs until our 14th EHS Congress in France… After the pandemic, and the health restrictions, here is some news that has just arrived concerning the venue of our congress in Lille Grand Palais, from the political authorities of the northern region of France: a European congress on cybersecurity was to be held in Lille Grand Palais in June of this year, and due to the health crisis, it has just been postponed to September, so with a telescoping of date with our own EHS congress, and unfortunately political congresses have priority over all others, including scientific meetings!… The news is not yet confirmed, and we will naturally keep you informed of the news and the date of our own meeting. However, we have already negotiated a postponement which has the least possible impact on the holding of this EHS congress, which could take place at Lille Grand Palais, with a simple delay of one day in the same week, i.e. on Friday 10th and Saturday 11th September 2021… An excellent opportunity to visit the magnificent city of Lille or its surroundings the next day, Sunday?

On the other hand, the news seems to be considered as encouraging concerning the evolution of the health crisis for next September, with a gradual resumption of practically normal activity during this period in France after the summer of 2021 (fingers crossed!)… We can therefore expect a large number of face-to-face participants, in addition to all the delegates who will not have been able to go to Lille, and who will attend the “virtual” part of this hybrid congress. Note that we are now receiving the conclusions of an “attendance survey” sent to our delegates according to 3 scenarios and the same question for September 2021: are you going to attend as a participant in Lille, are you going to attend as a virtual delegate, or “no, sorry, I won’t participate”?… Out of the 364 responses to date:

• Scenario 1 The situation is better without more real problems: => 66% will be present in Lille and 21% as virtual delegates
• Scenario 2 We are like today: nothing really bad, nothing really good: => 30% will be present in Lille and 49% as virtual delegates
• Scenario 3 The situation is terrible with a growing pandemic: => (as expected) only 6% will be present in Lille and 50% as virtual delegates

Considering a priori scenario 1 as the most probable in the next 5 months, this percentage of 66% of participants in “face-to-face” in Lille, seems very encouraging in the spirit of community which must remain ours during these scientific meetings. Anyway, we have finalized in addition fantastic virtual conditions with our PCO MCI and our digital editor, and will take advantage of all the virtual conferences put in place since the start of this pandemic… the result is mind-blowing and we will be able to go further to extend the reach of our Orthopaedic Society in Europe and beyond, for all matters related to hip surgery.

All these details will be posted very soon on our EHS Lille 2021 website, as well as the oral lectures and e-posters selected for the congress, while confirming that all the sessions of the conference, round tables, oral lectures and e-posters will be recorded and accessible in replay for 3 months. Thank you again for your enthusiastic commitment to our 14th EHS Congress… More than ever, we need you and we are counting on each of you!

Next September, all our roads, face-to-face or virtual, will lead to Lille!

Jean-Alain Epinette, MD

EHS President

Ambassador of the Month, Dr Walter van der Weegen

Dear Colleagues,

It is a true pleasure and an honour being Ambassador for the European Hip Society. Orthopaedic care for patients suffering from hip pathology is developing at a rapid pace, and the Society provides a wonderful platform for sharing ideas and initiating hip-related research, but also for the dissemination of new scientific evidence.

After completing my training as a movement scientist at the University of Maastricht, I started my research career in Sports Medicine, switching to Orthopaedic Surgery in 2006. Since then I have been working as a full time researcher at the department of Orthopaedic Surgery of the St Anna hospital in Geldrop, the Netherlands.

From the start I developed a special interest in hip pathology and hip replacement surgery, which led to my PhD thesis (Medical University of Leiden, supervisor: Professor R Nelissen [EHS Member]) on local tissue reactions surrounding Metal-on-Metal hip implants. With this specialized research interest, it is of course natural to attend the bi-annual EHS meetings, which I did for the first time in 2008 in the wonderful city of Madrid. I even had the privilege to present our scientific results at this meeting. From then on, I did not miss out on any of the following bi-annual meetings, and at each meeting our scientific work was accepted as a part of the scientific programme! A string I hope to continue for many more years. Each meeting provided me with the opportunity to meet orthopaedic surgeons and researchers with a similar interest in the hip joint, often leading to lively discussions from which new research ideas were conceived.

The strength of the EHS is of course in its members, who I have always learned to know as passionate about orthopaedics and hip pathology in particular. Although there will always be a place for hip surgery developments from mechanical and material perspectives as well as from surgical perspectives, times are changing, and also for orthopaedic surgery. Large scale data collection, with increasing possibilities to exchange this data, will open up new interesting and exciting research fields in hip pathology. This will involve wearable sensor technology, remote patient monitoring and artificial intelligence. I am sure we will learn a lot from these new technologies in the upcoming meetings. In our e-health lab in our hospital we have started to apply machine learning to digital history taking, and of course our first project was aimed at patients with hip pathology. Our first results are exciting and promising and we are looking forward to share these with the EHS members at upcoming meetings.

Besides the EHS meetings, Hip International is another well-renowned platform from the European Hip Society to disseminate scientific findings, in which I also had the honour to present our scientific work several times. And in between of course the regular newsletters keep us well informed on what is going on in the EHS community. With these platforms and based on its strong collective of members, the EHS is very well equipped to (continue to) be a leading organization for new exciting developments on hip pathology and surgery.

As an EHS Ambassador I ask you to applaud all the passion, commitment and hard work of the EHS meeting organizing committees, of the Hip International editorial team and reviewers and last but certainly not least the EHS board members and support staff. I am sure the EHS has an exciting and bright future and as an EHS Ambassador I am very happy to contribute to the promotion of the EHS. I am looking forward to meeting all EHS members in person again at the upcoming EHS meeting in Lille!

Dr Walter van der Weegen