Resumé of EHS 14th Congress

It was an honour and a great pleasure to welcome each of you to the beautiful city of Lille (10-11th September 2021), to share our EHS 14th Congress, despite many pitfalls and uncertainties… This event will pave the way for future EHS hybrid congresses, with the advantage of both the face to face conviviality necessary for the life of our community, and the digital option for a larger worldwide audience… We are proud to say that despite all the waves of Covid, the EHS boat is indeed afloat!

Of the 581 delegates, 65% met “face-to-face” at Lille Grand Palais during the two-day event. Digital participants appreciated 14 symposia, 400 oral communications and 200 e-posters. The scientific sessions were presented by over 260 speakers, including 135 “remotely”. Nearly 130 pre-registrations were organized ahead of the event and made available on the platform. The partnership with Industry brought together 28 exhibitors and 6 complementary conferences. A major advantage of the hybrid format is the ability to access the entire scientific programme in “replay” for two months post-congress (we had 489 connections in the first three weeks).

The complete statistics will be published soon on our website, but according to the first 82 responses, the satisfaction index for the scientific content was very favourable at 91% (54% “excellent” and 37% “proficient”). We would like to thank Hip Toulouse, whose scientific activities are unanimously recognized, as well as Canada our Guest Nation… These partnerships perfectly illustrate the word “together”, linking EHS with other brilliant orthopaedic societies, whose activities are invaluable, and perfectly complementary to ours.

Our report with a nice photo gallery is HERE, including the gala dinner at the fabulous Hermitage Gantois, which was a precious moment of conviviality and exchanging of professional and personal friendship, not forgetting to mention the exceptional performance of our lyrical singer, soprano Heather Newhouse.

This EHS Congress was our 14th, and throughout its existence (almost 30 years), we have exchanged our knowledge, shared our ideas and our clinical experiences on the basic, the current, and the future of our surgical specialty… Our European Society has become an indisputable reference in the field of hip surgery within all other orthopaedic societies in Europe and beyond. We were proud to have the opportunity to carry as high as possible EHS’s motto: “bringing orthopaedic hip surgeons together”.

See you in 2023 at the 15th EHS Congress in Bern, and in the meantime, we wish you the best in your personal and professional activities!

Jean-Alain Epinette MD
EHS Past President