This week saw Mike and resource team colleagues Mike Karski, Cy Ng and Chris Peach talking about the therapy at the NEC in Birmingham.
Mike spoke on recent advances in hand and wrist surgery and pay particular attention to the use of wide-awake local anaesthesia no tourniquet surgery (WALANT) and use this as a topic to introduce some unusual surgical procedures. he spoke on extensor ulnaris tendon (ECU) stabilisation, climbers pulley injuries, small joint arthroplasty, tendon transfers and wide-awake dynamic wrist arthroscopy.
The key take a message from Mike's talk was that such wide-awake surgery has significant advantages to the patient, the surgeon and the rehabilitation from the physiotherapist. many of these cases benefit from the biofeedback that awake patient can offer such as assessing range of movement, assessing the integrity of the repair by putting the repair under load, and also ensuring that there is no snagging or restriction of movement that maybe otherwise missed if the patient were asleep.
Mike finished off his his presentation talking about the new Scaphoid plate used to treat difficult non-union fractures and also the options in treating basis of osteoarthritis including trapeziectomy, base of thumb fusion or more recently total joint arthroplasty.