The American Society for Surgery of the Hand (ASSH) and the Japanese Society for Surgery of the Hand (JSSH) held its 6th Combined Meeting in Maui, Hawaii on March 29- April 1, 2015. The 2015 Combined Meeting: Unsolved Problems in Hand Surgery provided great educational content and an audience of 250-300 experts from around the world. Topics included perplexing problems in arthritis, congenital anomalies, flaps, scaphoid fractures, nerve injuries and distal radius fractures.
I gave one of the key note lectures on “Recurring Carpal Tunnel Syndrome”. This is a challenging and complex problem that has a great impact on patients with this condition. I talked about my novel approaches to this problem and showed many cases of my own patients and how I have been able to achieve good success.
I was thrilled to be on the program committee for this meeting, to give a keynote lecture, and get together with old friends. I had the opportunity to spend six weeks in Japan visiting a dozen centers, I was one of four traveling fellows selected from North American to participate in the Japanese Orthopaedic Association Traveling Fellowship in 1996. During my time at UCSF, I had a thirteen-year history of training Japanese surgeons here in the United States and having them work as research fellows in the Hand/Microsurgery Laboratory at University of California San Francisco.
To my delight, I was reacquainted with many of my hosts and colleagues from my 1996 trip to Japan. Additionally, three of my former research fellows from Japan, now senior hand surgeons, were present at the meeting. We had a rare opportunity to catch up with each other, enjoy a fine dinner, and even play some tennis in Maui.
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