Instructional Course Lectures (ICLs)

This ICL was originally presented at the AOSSM-AANA Combined 2021 Annual Meeting. Not ‘if’ but ‘when’ – complications are an inevitable part of life as a surgeon. Although sometimes simple in theory, dealing with complications represents a challenge for many of us, and our response to these difficult events and the patients affected by them speaks to our effectiveness as physicians. Young surgeons, in particular, are often unprepared for the bouts of failure that lay ahead.

Yet complications are perhaps our best educator and can be an important catalyst for improvement. Faculty will present the worst complications of their careers as it relates to common shoulder, elbow, and knee surgeries. We will discuss both the technical errors and subsequent changes made as well as the life lessons learned along the way. This is intended to be a practical, ‘in-the-trenches’ approach to minimize complications, manage bad outcomes and deliberately improve going forward.

This ICL was originally presented at the AOSSM-AANA Combined 2021 Annual Meeting. Hip arthroscopy is a rapidly growing and evolving field in orthopaedic sports medicine. The ability to incorporate this field into the general sports practice is highly attractive and desirable, as this allows the orthopaedic sports surgeon to treat a unique young, athletic pathologic spectrum. Given this, hip arthroscopy has expanded to allow treatment of more complex pathologies and has been used with increasing frequency throughout the US and internationally. As hip arthroscopy surgical volumes increase, it is of paramount importance to know and identify the intraoperative pitfalls and complications that occur - even in a high-volume hip arthroscopy surgical practice. It is of equal, if not higher importance to understand how to avoid and manage these complications when they occur.

This course will specifically focus on actual unplanned intraoperative worst day in the OR scenarios that have occurred in the high-volume hip arthroscopy practices of the course faculty over the past year. Specifically, the discussion will include a detailed description of the worst day in the operating room for each of the presenters, how the issue was identified and addressed, and how this experience changed future practice for the faculty. This will be a case-based learning environment in which the case will be presented followed by the ensuing "Worst Day in the OR" and the subsequent aftermath and related practice changing decisions.