Dear colleagues and Members of ESSKA 2000,
The European Society of Sports Traumatology, Knee Surgery and Arthroscopy (ESSKA) has the pleasure of inviting you to the 13th ESSKA Congress in Porto, May 21-24, 2008.
Porto - World Humanity Heritage - with its particular charm, its diversity of places, monuments, the rich atmosphere and different architectural styles, picturesque streets, busy squares, the river,
wine cellars and areas where the familiar and friendly day-to-day activities take place, creates
a bridge between tradition, identity and the multiple features of true development.
The weather will be superb in May, so take advantage of the sun and beaches, visit fantastic old towns dating from the Middle Ages as Braga, Guimarães, Viana do Castelo or the Port wine vineyards in the Douro valley.
We are proud to welcome you to the best scientific programme ever which features 18 Instructional Course Lectures, approximately 240 podium presentations and more than 540 posters. Altogether, there will be more than 50 symposia and 33 lectures.
Of course, this year’s congress introduces several new and exciting features. One of those is the National Award Session for the best paper in 15 European countries. A second is the Young Guns Meeting, presenting an exciting programme during the first congress day.
We welcome the 4 Highlight Speakers: John Bartlett (Australia), Gilles Walch (France), Michael Kjaer (Denmark) and Christopher Harner (USA), who will give insight into the frontline of sports traumatology. We are proud to invite these distinguished speakers to the ESSKA congress.
In approximately the same manner as the Innsbruck congress, the best paper of all submitted abstracts will be selected for the Theo-van-Rens Award. The 6 papers with the highest scores will compete for this prize in a separate session.
Like in Innsbruck 2 years ago, there will be a full day of Rehabilitation and Physiotherapy lectures, symposia and free papers chaired by May Arna Risberg, Suzanne Werner and Roland Thomeé. There will also be a full day of lectures and workshops for surgical nurses in addition to the regular programme. This session is organised by Ferran Montserrat, Francois Kelberine and Manuel Vieira da Silva.
Each day the programme will start with the Instructional Course Lectures between 7.30-8.45 h, followed by the plenary sessions with invited speakers giving highlight lectures at 9.00 h. From 10.00 h there will be 6 parallel rooms with symposia, lectures, free papers, debates, and re- gional symposia. The scientific programme committee has worked hard on integration, geographical and scientific balance and you will find several new speakers, many of them from Eastern Europe and the hosting country, Portugal.
During the lunch breaks the Orthopaedic companies will organise lunch symposia, demon- strating the latest technology available. These events are important, and most probably the best opportunity to keep up with the modern techniques.
The congress starts Wednesday morning, May 21, and will end on Saturday, May 24 at lunch time. We cordially welcome you all to Porto to share ideas and to participate in an exciting scientific and social programme.
Joao Espregueira-Mendes
Congress Chairman
Daniel Fritschy
President of
ESSKA 2000
Philippe Neyret & Jon Karlsson
Programme Chairs
