Dear honourable guests, friends and colleagues,

Welcome to the 39th Annual Congress of Hong Kong Orthopaedic Association!

The main theme of this year Annual Congress is “Rebuild and Rebrighten: Aging Orthopaedics to the Next Century”. Ten years ago, our 29th Annual Congress focussed on fragility fracture for the first time. Since then, there have been a lot of changes in the society and the orthopaedic community, both locally and globally. The whole world has been facing the impacts brought by the aging population, particularly in the developed societies. Hong Kong has surpassed Japan to be the area with longest life expectancy at birth since 2016, both males and females. As a result, Hong Kong has witnessed constant increase incidence of hip fractures in the past decade, now roughly around 7000 hip fractures per year. There was also an tremendous increase in degenerative conditions which need orthopaedic intervention. There are more than 2000 total knee replacements performed per year, and yet our average waiting time still ranges from 36 to 110
months.

Healthcare professions around the world are fighting hard together against this tsunami of fragility fracture and degenerative conditions. Newer medications combating osteoporosis are constantly emerging, with a new form of reversible anti-resorptive agent approved since 2010, and a new bone-forming agent approved since 2017. Arthroplasty surgeries, despite its long history in orthopaedic surgery, are constantly evolving, The fast development in navigation and robotic surgery in arthroplasty in the past decade allows the procedures to be done in high accuracy and minimize complications. In Hong Kong, due to the constant hard works from the healthcare professions, public health administrators became aware of the importance of ortho-geriatric collaboration and fracture liaison services, and finally started to invest resources in these aspects. Additional funding for osteoporosis medications, fracture fixation implants specialized for osteoporotic bones, 365-day physiotherapy services, and setting up trauma list allowed better management of fragility fracture and enable our elderly to continue their lives in the community with reasonable quality. Similarly the pressing volume of patients with degenerative conditions led to the setting up of joint replacement centres by Hospital Authority since 2010, with the 6 th centre just opened in 2018. Other efforts made by the local arthroplasty surgeons, including the increasingly common unicompartmental knee replacement, simultaneous bilateral total knee replacement, and fast-track rehabilitation, continued to benefit our increasing elderly population.

The field of geriatric orthopaedics is so vast and rapidly developing that it would be difficult to cover within a 2-day program, but we try to include every aspect in our 5 plenary lectures, from degeneration, deformity, trauma to fragility fractures, including the most advanced technology and up-to-date concepts of management. Renowned international and local faculty are invited to share their expert opinion in these fields. We have also 7 concurrent sessions and 9 free-paper sessions. In addition, a special satellite program on “Best Practise in Ortho-geriatrics” would be arranged to provide a platform for experts in multiple disciplines to share and exchange their ideas and experiences.

We would like to express our thanks to the hard work from the Organizing Committee of the Annual Congress, the tremendous support from the Council of the Hong Kong Orthopaedic Association, and the great contribution from all the international and local speakers. We would also like to thank the sponsors for their continuous support over years in technical exhibitions, lunch symposia and advertising in program book. Finally we thank all of you for your active participation particularly in this year Annual Congress.

Dr Albert Yung-chak HSU, Dr Kam-kwong WONG
Co-Chairmen, Organising Committee