The Footte Memorial Lecture was delivered by Professor David Barrett FRCS on December 7th 2005. The President was in the chair. After the minutes of the previous meeting were read and approved the President introduced Prof. Barrett who is Professor of Orthopaedic Engineering in the University of Southampton and a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at Southampton General Hospital and then proceeded to outline the known history of Dr Footte, which has been recorded elsewhere in this record of our meetings. Professor Barrett spoke to the title ‘How to Ski Uphill [and how to survive modern orthopaedics]’
After an amusing introduction he outlined the plan of his talk under the headings:
Why ski?
How to avoid death
Things about accidents
Things about knees
How to train
And what to do when your knee explodes
He didn’t explain why people ski but did explain why people die. The majority of serious accidents occur between snowboarders and skiers who are not skiing when they are hit at high speed in the anterior chest by snowboarders. Only a minority of accidents occur off-piste or in avalanches. There is an increase in knee injuries. Some 14,000 a year. Higher boots mean fewer ankle injuries but more knees injuries. Furthermore there is a disproportionate increase in women’s knee injuries because the female knee is different to the male knee. He outlined the design and function of the knee as demonstrated in the computer programme his team have developed in Southampton and the effect of various activities upon the knee: low loads such as walking and swimming and high loads from skiing, netball, squash, rowing; and jogging is the exercise of the devil with its high impact knee loading and repetitive stressing. And when your knee explodes, i.e. the supra condylar fracture of the femur his advice was: get 1st aid, see local specialist for injection of low molecular weight heparin, stop the pill and get home. Do not have treatment locally.
He finished his talk with an overview of the latest techniques in knee surgery which his team have developed using computer assisted knee replacement in which sensors placed on the bone send a signal to the computer and the prosthesis is inserted with laser guidance. The result is reduced wear on the prosthesis giving it a longer life – important for younger patients.
The President then thanked Professor Barrett for his excellent talk.
In any other business the President informed the members that Prof, John Norman and Dr Pamela Ashurst had agreed to become trustees of the Prudential Bond. He also hoped everyone had seen the review of the society’s rules.
There being no other business the meeting finished at 10.15 pm