By Prof. Karl Knahr.
The annual EFORT Congress has become one of the most important global meetings for orthopaedic surgeons. One of the reasons is the huge effort that this federation puts in to steadily improving their events. At the coming meeting in June 2010 in Madrid the organisation again will once again be offering a new highlight: the Tribology Day.
Wear to the articulating material in total hip arthroplasty is still one of the most challenging topics that has not yet been entirely resolved. Therefore the Scientific Committee has thus decided to dedicate one entire day to this topic. The goal of the day is to give an overview of the problems of wear in total hip arthroplasty. It is aimed at both young orthopaedic surgeons in- training and experienced surgeons.
The day starts with the basics, including lectures on tribology and biomechanics related to this problem. The morning session is followed by free paper presentations, all of them dealing with experiences of the most used articulations. In the afternoon there is a special symposium scheduled with invited speakers to deal with very relevant topics. This symposium is followed by a session called “What’s New in Tribology”, during which experts from industry are invited to present their new products. The meeting will conclude with free papers discussed by experienced faculty members.
Finally we plan to arrange a “Dinner with Experts” in the evening, to which the residents in-training who took part in the tribology day are invited together with experts in the field. There will therefore be the opportunity for personal contact, as well as to ask as many questions as these up-and-coming surgeons would like.
