Welcome Address
Dear Colleagues,
We like to welcome you to the EKS 2022 Arthroplasty Conference in Munich, Germany!
Right now things are rapidly changing in the world of knee arthroplasty. Knee arthroplasty has been successful for many years and consequently goals are set substantially higher. Driven by the increasing expectations of our patients new concepts and cutting edge technology is evolving. Todays patients want more than just pain relief, more than just acceptable range of motion, they want painless full range of motion for challenging sports capabilities. Everlasting gold standards such as the mechanical axis goal are in question. Still debate about the optimal alignment is ongoing while artificial intelligence promises to give personalized advice in the future. What are our goals in implant positioning and alignment? How can we best achieve them? What does artificial intelligence tell us?
Technology such as robotic guidance provides increased accuracy collecting intraoperative data to link them to outcome measures. Industry is keen on these data and markets new technology with well-understood focus on return of investment. We as surgeons should be careful to keep control of these data to be able to check new technologies for real patient benefit. Our resources are limited after the COVID pandemic and we will have to prove the value of cost intensive technology to health care insurances and ultimately to our patients. Our meeting is open for discusssion with you!
Apart from financial limits the Medical Device Regulation came into effect and could lead to shortages in implant and device supply in the EU. Some implants will even disappear from the market and innovations will be delayed. Which implants are really necessary? Which technology to keep and which to drop? How to deal with temporary shortages?
Ultimately, the focus is on our patients. Concepts in knee replacement, techniques and technology are developed just to fulfill our patients needs. Increasing transparency, quality control and PROMS data monitor our success in achieving patient satisfaction and survival of our implants. But how should we improve the already highly effective procedure? How should we deal with patient’s expectations? How to enhance ligament balancing? What should we keep and what should we change?
And there are many more questions to discuss with you. We invited the leading experts in knee arthroplasty to update us on new concepts and open questions in knee arthroplasty to become better in our daily practice.
We are looking forward to a successful meeting, your input and your burning questions!
Conference Chairs
Prof. dr. Andreas Halder
Prof. dr. Robert Hube
Prof. dr. Carsten Perka