OTA Annual Meeting Roundup

The annual meeting of the Orthopaedic Trauma Association (OTA) continues to stand out as the foremost global meeting focussed on the practice and science of orthopaedic trauma surgery. All of the global opinion leaders in orthopaedic trauma regularly present their work, alongside instructional elements, and it remains the meeting at which one will find most of the United Kingdom’s leading trauma surgeons. The UK Orthopaedic Trauma Society (OTS) is steadily bringing practice-changing meetings of this kind to the UK and, given time, it seems likely that the OTS meetings should be part of UK trauma and orthopaedic (T&O) surgeons’ calendars. The 30th anniversary 2014 OTA Annual Meeting was held between 15 and 18 October 2014 in Tampa, Florida, hosted by the irrepressible Roy Sanders, of the calcaneal fracture classification. Nearby, the white sands of Clearwater Beach and the turquoise warm water of the Gulf of Mexico posed stiff competition for the extensive educational programme which offered a combination of a large collection of instructional course lectures, symposia, and scientific exhibits representing a wide range of trauma subspecialties. The programme committee presented 150 podium presentations from over 800 submitted, along with 170 posters, for the 1340 attendees. Prior to the annual meeting, on the Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning there was a number of pre-meeting events, which cater for the variety of trauma surgeons attending. There is a guest nation each year, which this year was Brazil; 2016 will be the UK’s turn as guest nation in Vancouver, Canada. The extensive OTA meeting includes a number of ‘pre-meeting’ events such as the pelvic surgeons’ forum hosted by Adam Starr each year, and the basic science focus forum. A standout paper from …