British Elbow & Shoulder Society BESS

BRITISH ELBOW AND SHOULDER SOCIETY
Royal College of Surgeons,
35-43 Lincoln's Inn Fields,
London
WC2A 3PN

Tel: 020 7405 6507

About BESS

History of Shoulder Surgery in the United Kingdom

Shoulder surgery was a Cinderella specialty in the UK in the 1970s. The only common shoulder operations were for recurrent anterior dislocation of the shoulder; the standard operation used was the Putti-Platt operation - probably invented by Putti at the Rizzoli Institute, Bologna, Italy but brought to the UK- by Platt and popularized by Osmond-Clarke (1948) with his article on 'Habitual dislocation of the shoulder. The Putti-Platt operation'.
Very few orthopaedic surgeons in the UK understood many of the shoulder pathologies and the author had his interest in the shoulder stimulated by attending a training course on 'Examination of the musculoskeletal system' run by James Cyriax of St Thomas's Hospital, London in 1977. Following this a research project on shoulder movement was carried out in Nottingham as a result of a Medical Research Council Training Research Fellowship and this has led to a lifetime interest in the shoulder and more recently in the elbow from Joint Replacement in the Shoulder & Elbow, WA Wallace

  
 History of BESS

The British Elbow and Shoulder Society was founded as a result of an increasing interest in shoulder and elbow surgery in the UK in the early 1980s, and particularly after a very successful Third ICSS meeting in Japan. The stimulus came from Michael Watson, who wrote the following letter on 3 November 1986:
'I think the time has come to take the bull by the horns and seriously consider the nuts and bolts of setting up a British Shoulder Surgery Association. I am sure that we are going to start to get enquiries for our corporate stance on technical and administrative features of shoulder surgery and it would be difficult to establish a common attitude without an association. I suggest an organisation under the umbrella of the BOA with the approval of you and the others who were in Japan (3rd ICSS). I propose that we get the ball rolling.' 
 
 
As a result of that letter the founding members of BESS: lan Bayley, Michael Watson, Steve Copeland and the Angus Wallace) met on 28 March 1987 at 92 Harley Street in London and set up the Society. The meetings of BESS have been held annually. 

 

See Also
European Society for Surgery of Shoulder and Elbow,
Société Europèenne de Chirurgie de l'Epaule et du Coude SECEC