Mike has been invited to speak at this years American Society for Surgery of the Hand in Boston.
He will be seeking on three separate sessions dealing with hand injuries in the elite athlete, one lecture on thumb metacarpophalangeal ligament injuries, another on ulna sided wrist pain and the last on forearm fractures in athletes.
Mike has good data on Skier's thumb and in a consecutive series of 15 professional athletes he had a return to play of 3.6 weeks on average in a thermoplastic splint. There were no re-rupture and a symmetrical range of movement and strength when the athletes were reviewed on average 2 years post injury.
Mike will be also talking about ECU stabilisation and in particular the use of wide awake hand surgery (WALANT) for this operation.
His final formal lecture will be on forearm fractures will include a few key surgical tips including the use of appropriate sized plates, unicortical fixation at the end of the plates and then need to pre bend the plate wherever possible. RTP will be discussed and our opinion that return to heavy weights should be avoided until the fracture has united.
Mike's final session at ASSH will be a clinical consultation corner where delegates are invited to bring along complex cases in which they are having difficulties in deciding the management plan. Having done similar sessions as this in past conferences Mike appreciates that this is a very important learning experience for both the delegates and senior faculty in improving patient outcome by discussing difficult cases.