Wow! I had to write to share my recent experience at the World Symposium on Congenital Malformation of the Hand and Upper Limb. This meeting is held once every three years and this year was in the United States in Dallas Texas, hosted by Marybeth Ezaki and Scott Oishi and the Texas Scottish Rite Hospital. The meeting was an amazing 3 day event with discussion of all things involving the congenital upper extremity. The participants included visitors from 6 continents and more than 30 countries!
I was fortunate to be on the program committee (although the hosts did the majority of the work)- the talks were on multiple fascinating topics ranging from surgical treatment to incidence to the psychology of children with these anomalies. I shared our experience on outcomes of treatment for complex syndactyly (that is syndactyly with bony involvement).
On a related note, we presented the first annual Manske Award (named in honor of my former partner, Paul Manske) for the Best Congenital Manuscript of the year, 2011. The winner was Ann Nachemson and colleagues from Gothenburg Sweden for their paper entitled “Children with surgically corrected hand deformities and upper limb deficiencies: self-concept and psychological well-being . J Hand Surg European, 2011. 36: 795–801. This paper demonstrated that children with congenital hand anomalies have self concept and pyschological well being which is comparable to unaffected children. Interestingly, those children with severe deformities actually score better than those children with milder anomalies. Congratulation to Ann and colleagues for a great contribution to our understanding.