2022 BOA Congress Review

Fergal Monsell, BOA Honorary Secretary

I write with delight and relief in approximately equal measure to report that the 2022 BOA Congress was an unqualified success. Whilst the long tail of the pandemic continues to affect us all on a daily basis, we had sufficient manoeuvrability to deliver an ‘old style’ event. We are still collating the feedback but prima facie, this has been universally complimentary and is due to the herculean efforts of Charlie Silva, Venease Morgan, Anna Prunty and the wider team. Our partners in industry have also been accommodating and flexible and with a little bit of imagination, we were able to be sufficiently nimble to deliver all aspects of a traditional BOA Congress. The behind-the-scenes work, which is required for an event of this size is colossal and I am grateful to Simon Hodkinson for completing a large part of it, and the organisation was already at an advanced stage when I became involved in January.

We were returning to a familiar venue at the International Convention Centre in Birmingham with excellent transportation links, accessibility and a city centre location, which accommodated a wide variety of extracurricular activities. The timing coincided with a major urban face lift that had been undertaken for the recent Commonwealth Games and the most visible mascot of this event, a large metal bull, remained in residence until the last day of our Congress.

There were approximately 2,000 delegates for the main section of the Congress, which was punctuated with excellent scientific content. The theme was ‘Technology, data and recovery’ with a Presidential guest lecture delivered by Professor Berry considering the introduction

of new technology with lessons from joint arthroplasty and relevance to the coming digital instrumentation revolution. Plenary sessions included ‘The vision, the opportunity and the reality’ and ‘The Big Studies 2022’, with both sessions attracting more than 800 delegates. There was a slight reduction in the number of free papers, which may be a legacy effect of COVID but nevertheless, we were able to combine where necessary and deliver sessions with top quality educational content.

Our engagement with industry is fundamentally important to the success of this event and 81 companies exhibited, occupying 20% more exhibition space than the previous event in Aberdeen. Industry feedback has also been very positive, with 80% describing this year’s Congress as either an excellent or good event and 85% have already expressed a wish to attend next year.

For those that were unable to attend in person or who faced the dilemma of choosing between simultaneous sessions, all content is available on the BOA website and can be viewed at leisure. Delegates have exclusive access to this material for a period of three months and following this, it will be made more widely available on a number of digital media outlets.

After a short break, we are already planning for the 2023 Congress with a theme of ‘Sustainable Systems’ and hope that you will be able to join us 19th – 22nd September at the ACC, Liverpool.

Awards and Medals

Congratulations to our Congress prize winners! It was wonderful to be able to celebrate the fantastic achievements of our members with our Awards and Medals session at Congress in Birmingham.

The Best of the Best Certificate went to Alistair Mayne representing the Northern Ireland region – for their talk on “The feasibility of achieving Elective Care Framework targets for Total Hip Arthroplasty (THA) and Total Knee Arthroplasty (TKA) in Northern Ireland”.

The Medical Student Podium Prize winner was Sophie Heppenstall for their presentation “Exploring the association between DXA-derived hip geometric measures and hip osteoarthritis: findings from 40,000 individuals”.

Karola Pawloy was the winner of the Best Poster Prize with “No difference in risk for revision due to deep infection between clindamycin and cephalosporins in cemented primary total knee replacements. A report from The Norwegian Arthroplasty Register 2005-2019”.

We extend our congratulations to Kalpesh Vaghela, winner of the Robert Jones essay prize and medal; and Jan Drmota, winner of the medical students’ essay prize.

Thank you to all our exhibitors who supported us to help make Congress happen. The winner of the Exhibitors Cup for Best Large Stand was Stryker UK and the Exhibitors Plaque for Best Compact Stand went to JRI Orthopaedics.