September 2020

Dear EHS Members & Friends, 

That’s it, it’s (already) the end of a very special Summer, between masks, tests, restrictions and postponements… damned Covid! …Normally, this Fall we should be in the home stretch of our Lille EHS Congress… Well, Sic vita est… We will be even better prepared next year for this 14th Congress of our European Hip Society!

Our first thought will be to salute the magnificent scientific resilience of our Lebanese colleagues and friends, while their country is so hard hit by the terrible repetition of political, economic, health crises, and finally by this gigantic explosion in Beirut. The orthopedic surgeons will nevertheless organize their 17th Annual Congress of the Lebanese Orthopedic Society as a “virtual meeting” on 2-3rd October 2020… We will be with them wholeheartedly, wishing them all the best for a tremendous success of their scientific meeting…

This Covid-19 has also enabled joint work to be carried out between more than 15 surgeons internationally, devoted to “Disruption of joint arthroplasty services in Europe during the COVID-19 pandemic: an online survey within the European Hip Society (EHS) and the European Knee Associates (EKA)”, recently published online by Martin Thaler et al. “Thanks to COVID a new EHS / EKA era in the hip and knee joint replacement in Europe emerged and will be continued”, Nanne Kort said, and after this huge work by input, support, teamwork and friendship, the last word was given by Luigi Zagra: “Champagne, cheers and even Prosecco!…”

We can only rejoice in these professional and friendly relations with our colleagues from other orthopedic specialties, the most recent example of which, thanks to an initiative by Fares Haddad, is the EHS participation on Friday 28th November, in the SICOT webinar of the “Program of Innovative Orthopedic Networking, e-learning, Education & Research (PIONEER)”, dedicated to the robot in hip surgery. This will complement the MAST 7 webinar in Greece on 11-13th December organized by Eleftherios Tsiridis and EHS, and approved by EFORT, dedicated to: “Advances in Arthroplasty: What Matters? Complexities, Complications and New Technologies, USA versus Europe”.

This “transversal” participation between Scientific Societies confirms both the good scientific health of our Scientific Community, including in these times of health crisis, but also the place of our European Hip Society, as an essential official representative of the hip surgery in Europe and internationally…

In total, therefore, the days are shorter, and Autumn is coming soon, but our morale must be maintained at its best level for these new scientific challenges… “TENET”!…

Our absolute best regards from the entire EHS Board,

Jean-Alain Epinette, MD

EHS President

EHS Ambassador of the Month, Hiroshi Fujita

Dear Colleagues,

I feel a great honour to be selected as the Ambassador of the Month. My name is Hiroshi Fujita and I am from Japan. “Hiro” means broad in Japanese and similar with “Hiroshima” which means broad island. I was born in Kobe in 1963. Kobe is a great harbour city, and its name was used for a famous NBA player “Kobe Bryant”, because his farther once lived in Kobe and loved it. I graduated from Kyoto University in 1987. Kyoto has been voted the world’s best city to visit. “Kyo” means capital and “to” means capital, too. Kyoto was the capital of Japan for more than 1,000 years until Tokyo became the new capital in 1867. As “To” means East, “Tokyo” means East capital. Kyoto University turned out the highest number of Nobel prizes in Japan.

20 years ago, I got a fellowship from the Japanese government to study abroad. I selected Europe to stay for a year and visited 37 institutes all over Europe. Firstly, I visited Exeter and learned a lot from Graham Gie and John Timperley. Since then, I have a tight connection with them. I also established an educational foundation for cemented hip named CHEF (Cemented Hip Educational Foundation) in 2013. I also stayed in Bern for 7 months to study joint preservation surgery. Professor Reinhold Ganz (EHS Honorary Member) and Klaus Siebenrock (EHS President Elect) influenced me a lot.

I firstly participated in an EHS conference in Milano 2012 and met Prof Tsiridis and Dr Epinette for the first time, and I remember the latter asked me a strict question after my talk of IBBC (Interface bioactive bone cement), which was developed by Dr Oonishi 36 years ago.

I was selected as a member of the International Committee of JSRA (Japanese Society of Replacement Arthroplasty) in 2018 and I am looking forward to combined meetings of JSRA and EHS to be held in Europe and Japan in 2022.

As most of the Japanese hips are dysplastic, Japanese surgeons are fighting with so-called “difficult primary” on a daily basis. My strategy against this issue is using bulk bone grafting with cemented cup for the acetabular side and polished double taper stem (Exeter) for the femoral side. I hope Covid-19 soon subsides and I can take the opportunity to present my experiences with many of the members of EHS in the near future. My life’s work is “THA which is safe and also has long durability”.

Appendix: I am a ski instructor qualified by SAJ (Ski Association of Japan). I also play golf – not only in Japan but also in Scotland and Hawaii.

Dr Hiroshi Fujita
EHS International Member
Kyoto, Japan