Dear BESS members
2012 has been another successful year for BESS. We now have 538 members, 25% of whom represent the Allied Health Professional Community, the remainder being principally surgeons but also other doctors involved in the care of patients with shoulder and elbow disorders.
We are one of the largest and most successful sub-specialty societies with thriving educational and scientific activities including travelling fellowships, research grants, treatment guidelines, multi-centre clinical trials and our annual meeting.
The annual meeting this year took place in Torbay and was hosted by Veronica Conboy, Tim Bunker, Colin Steinlechner, Cheryl Baldwick, Jeff Kitson, Peter Hamer Raju Ramesh Archie Hawken, Bobby Ainsworth, Huw David, Andy Murphy and Mark Brinsden. It was a huge success with 410 attendees. We were pleased to welcome as the Presidential Guest Lecturer Professor Pascal Boileau from France, and as the Local Organisers' Guest Lecturer Prof Jonathan Clasper from the Royal Army Medical Corps. The Allied Health Professional Guest Lecturer was Professor Lori Michener from the USA. All gave outstanding lectures and were very well received by the membership. The meeting was not only a scientific success it was also a financial success and this will allow us to undertake more educational and scientific activities in the next years.
We are looking forward to our annual meeting next year in Leicester, at the Leicester Curve and Alison Armstrong and the local organisers are setting up a very interesting program. The Presidential Guest Lecturer will be Leesa Galatz from St Louis, the Local Organisers' Guest Lecturer will be Professor Shawn O'Driscoll from the Mayo Clinic, USA.
The society has grown to such a size that we now require more formal administration and we will be establishing a British Elbow and Shoulder Society office in London during 2013, including the recruitment of a dedicated secretary/administrator to the society. We will be developing the website during the next year, updating the content. Over the past 12 months, the fellowships have been modified such that they, although supported by the industry, are now labelled only as BESS fellowships. This gives us more flexibility in the awards.
As always, I wish to thank fellow members of the BESS Council including new members, Val Jones representing the Allied Health Professionals, Duncan Tennent chairing the Education Committee, Jonny Rees chairing the Research Committee, Peter Brownson as the Membership Secretary. Mike Thomas has moved from the Treasurer's role to the Secretary's role, and Paul Manning has taken on the Treasurer's role. Ro Kulkarni is our Vice-President and President-Elect. Lars Neuman is our immediate past president. I particularly want to thank the outgoing team who have given large amounts of valuable time and expertise. In Leicester we will need to elect a new Vice-President as President-Elect.
2012 has also seen the inclusion of shoulders and elbows in the National Joint Registry and we are anticipating a good response by the membership in this program. It is likely that very useful information and data will follow over the next decade or so. We are actively collaborating and liaising with other countries who have national joint registries in order to pool data and strengthen the evidence supporting shoulder and elbow operations.
We have also engaged with the British Orthopaedic Association in the production of national guidelines for frozen shoulder, led by Amar Rangan, and subacromial decompression and rotator cuff repair led by Jonny Rees.
Our journal, Shoulder and Elbow, continues to be successful and we are hoping that we will be able to have the publication accepted by PubMed central in the future.
I would like to wish everyone a very Happy Christmas and a Good New Year in 2013. I am sure we will have further productive activities arising from the society and a very successful meeting in Leicester.
Andy | 
