Since 1979, the year our Society was founded, a lot of things around have changed. What did not change is addressing the members with “Friends”! Since the ERASS association is only 31 years old, many opportunities are still open for ERASS. ERASS started as a subcommittee of EULAR in 1977, in which surgeons involved in arthritis surgery discussed the holistic approach, which they thought to be imperative for the rheuma patient.
Three decades later, this approach is beginning to be ( again) state-of-the-art in orthopaedic patient care. Within the orthopaedic community the last decade showed a strong tendency towards a more technical, “mono extremity” or even “mono joint” surgical patient approach.
On the other hand, since the Bone and Joint Decade, which will end this year, a tendency reemerges within the orthopaedic community to address holism in patient care again.
More specific, the discrepancy between the surgeon’s and the patient’s expectation as far as the result of a surgical procedure is concerned. This has been addressed for both the upper extremity as well as the lower extremity surgery. It seems, that expectation management has a key role, which was already known to Rheuma surgeons more than 30 years ago.
Are we going back to the year of birth of ERASS?
Yes, a little, but now with participation of surgically more orientated rheumatologists. The latter group has performed extensive outcome research on both, conservative as well as surgical treatment. with special attention on the Qoly’s for the patient.
This outcome is of high importance, next to the exchange of ideas on the development of surgical techniques. Thus, the purpose of ERASS is to combine both, the exchange of surgical technical ideas and the outcome, as determined by our patients.
The advantage of a small Society is obvious: close collaboration between people who know each other.
In this line of thought one goal of your Executive Board could be to collect cross cultural data on patient’s perception of their preoperative burden of disease throughout Europe:
