On Friday 3rd February Mr Ian McDermott hosted the 3rd Annual Meeting of the UK Biological Knee Society, at The Vale Resort in Cardiff. 
Fifty of the UK’s top specialist knee surgeons attended the meeting, which included a fantastic programme of presentations on the most up-to-date, cutting edge surgical treatments for biological knee reconstruction.
Lectures included
- Meniscal scaffold: the future or dead in the water? – Mr Peter Thompson (Coventry)
- Chondrotissue articular cartilage grafting: The Abergavenny Experience. Mr Ian MacKie (Abergavenny)
- Osteochondral graftins: how I do it. Professor Martyn Snow (Birmingham)
- The BioPoly partial resurfacing implant. Professor Michael McNicholas (Liverpool)
- Stem cells in the knee: the dawn of orthobiologics? Professor Vladimir Bobic (Chester)
Keynote Debate
“You say ‘tomatoes’, I say ‘tomatoes’… The procurement, processing and provision of soft tissue allografts in the UK: does it really matter?
- Ms Carrie Hartill, RTI, U.S. – the American Way
- Ms Katy Juttla, NHS BT – the British Way
Sponsors of the event were Hospital Innovations, Int2Med, Game Ready, Ossur, Vivostat and Ingeneron.
President of the association, Mr Ian McDermott says “This meeting of the UK Biological Knee Society brought together about fifty of the UK’s top specialist knee surgeons to talk about the latest surgical treatments for biological reconstruction in the knee. We’re seeing a real divergence of skills sets in the UK, with some ‘Bipolar Knee Surgeons’ offering patients nothing more than a 10-minute ‘arthroscopy and washout’ or else full knee replacement surgery, vs those of us at the cutting-edge who are performing major complex reconstructions such as combined meniscal allograft transplantation and articular cartilage grafting — the so-called ‘Biological Knee Replacement’.
The aim of this society is to promote best practice and to make patients and surgeons alike aware of the latest and best surgical treatments that are actually available nowadays. The presentations at this meeting were outstanding, and emphasise just what is actually possible nowadays in the right hands.”
Ian McDermott can be contacted for more information on the UK Biological Knee Society and for appointments via his secretary Frankie on mcdermott.admin@sportsortho.co.uk