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ASIA PACIFIC WRIST ASSOCIATION
The association is a non-profit international scientific association open to all individuals involved or interested in the wrist and the surgical management of its disorders.
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Join the dynamic international association of wrist enthusiasts

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President’s Message

It is an honour to be elected as the 5th President of the Asia Pacific Wrist Association. APWA was founded 8 years ago with 21 surgeons from 10 countries under the guidance PC Ho.

At this time the Association was essentially a group of enthusiasts committed to advancing the diagnosis and treatment of wrist conditions with a particular interest in arthroscopy. Owing to the impressive degree of creativity exhibited by the small number of active members, arthroscopy is now an everyday tool and minimally invasive wrist surgery is the norm. Over the years the Association has played a pivotal role in the evolution of wrist surgery into a discipline in its own right. What has been achieved by preceding APWA Presidents is extraordinary. I have observed a genuine commitment to providing ongoing educational opportunities through Annual Scientific Meetings, webinars and endorsed courses – benefitting surgeons at all stages of the profession within the Asia Pacific region and beyond. The real strength of the Association lies in its ability to foster collaboration and promote learning on various levels.

At a national level, the Association recently facilitated the first APWA wrist course in Indonesia. An ongoing affiliation has been established between our two organisations with the shared goal of promoting the advancement of wrist surgery in the region.

At an individual level, the APWA Travelling Fellowship has supported and facilitated the once-in-a-lifetime learning experience for 9 young wrist surgeons to date. This opportunity enables each surgeon to travel to five APWA-approved centres in the Asia Pacific region and attend the APWA Annual Scientific Meeting. It is not only an opportunity to observe expert surgeons and develop technical skills, but also to establish valuable professional relationships that will continue to benefit the recipient over the course of their entire career. It is rewarding to see the enthusiasm of previous APWA Travelling Fellowship recipients result in active contributions to the organisation.

APWA recognises the importance of offering different modalities to share knowledge. While it is not always possible to pursue in-person education, technology has been embraced to provide these opportunities online with a new APWA video portal on our website. I encourage members to explore and contribute to this valuable resource. For publication of quality research papers, we encourage members support The Journal of Wrist Surgery. The Journal was recently awarded an impact factor and its reputation is continuing to strengthen under the leadership of Toshi Nakamura, Editor in Chief.

While it is evident that the influence of APWA is greater than the number of members, it is my objective to grow our organisation in terms of size, impact, opportunity, network and geographical reach. Since my tenure as President began, the organisation has already doubled in size. APWA has a huge potential and I look forward to bringing this to fruition with assistance from the Board and our Members.

Jeff Ecker

Jeff Ecker

Message from Immediate Past President

Dear all the APWA members and wrist lovers,

Firstly, I would like to express my excited feeling that it is my great honor to be nominated by the founder PC Ho and all the committee as the fourth president of APWA.

In the past two years, the past president Toshiyasu Nakamura, secretary Joo-yup Lee and all the board members have made lots of efforts in organizing the online courses and activities, which is indispensable to keep our organization moving forward. Thank you all!

The 6th APWA Congress and 10 Years Anniversary of Shanghai Huashan – CUHK Wrist Arthroscopy Course have just been hold in Shanghai Dec. 3^rd-4^th 2021. Thanks for the great and kind supports from all the APWA members! The lecture videos, which have been one of the most important parts to make the 2021 Shanghai APWA colorful, forming an academic feast to the wrist lover all over the world.

Due to the epidemic, the 10th anniversary of the wrist arthroscopy class originally scheduled for 2020 had been postponed one year; Due to the epidemic, international and most domestic friends and colleagues could not come to Shanghai to meet together;

Due to the epidemic also, the delayed 10th anniversary was combined with the 2021 Shanghai Asia Pacific Wrist Association Annual Congress; Due to the epidemic also, we had the opportunity to create this unique change-over ceremony across time and space.

After I completed my term as the 2nd IWAS president, I received the APWA president’s medal from Dr. Toshiyasu Nakamura from Tokyo.

I would unite these two international renowned associations, and work together with wrist lovers all over the world, to make further achievements in the field of wrist surgery.

It is a great honor to be officially inaugurated as 4th APWA President.

APWA was found in Hong-Kong in 2015. Since then, six years have already passed. The first president of APWA was PC, followed by the Professor Greg Bain as the 2nd president, then, Toshiyasu Nakamura as the 3rd president of the association. APWA has brought together wrist experts from the Asia-Pacific region, promoted the development of wrist arthroscopy technology in this region, and has a strong international influence now. All these achievements could not have been achieved without the tremendous efforts of our founder PC Ho, the presidium members Greg Bain, Toshiyasu Nakamura and all the committee members.

During my presidency, I will do further promotion for APWA, especially in Mainland China. As the president of the CSSH (Chinese society for surgery of the hand), I have already established the Wrist arthroscopy sub-committee in CSSH, which would be a strong support for APWA.

Thanks for the trust of wrist experts all over the world! It’s my great pleasure to serve the society. Please feel free to contact me if you have any advises about APWA.

all the best wishes,

Wen-Dong Xu M.D. & Ph.D.

Professor of Hand Surgery

Vice-President of Huashan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, China

President of CSSH

President of APWA

Past-President of IWAS

E-mail: [email protected]

Wendong Xu

Message from Past President

It has been difficult days for all of you to live in whole over the world due to covid-19 pandemic in these 8 months. Since Asian Pacific Federation of Societies for Surgery of the Hand (APFSSH) meeting in Melbourne in March 2020, we have spent all times in our home and most of the meetings have been changed to Webinar. Due to this reason, we decided to postpone our 6th Annual Congress in Singapore to May 2023 as the 8th Congress and now our 6th congress will be in Shanghai 2021. I hope this severe situation of pandemic will be resolved soon.

At the 5th Congress of APWA in 2019 in Seoul, I took over the president position from Prof. Greg Bain. Greg did extremely great job for managing the association, creating strong committees under executive board, and negotiating to Thieme Publishers to be the Journal of Wrist Surgery as our affiliated journal. Now you can find our APWA logo on the front page of the Journal of Wrist Surgery. You will subscribe the Journal with 25% discounted price.

Normally we hold our Annual General Meeting (AGM) with the Annual Congress, however, due to postponed Annual Congress this year, we will hold AGM in January 2021 via Zoom Webinar. I will send the information very soon.

I arranged the committee members in last March 2020. Chair of the fellowship committee is now Keiji Fujio with advisor of former chair Winglim Tse. Congress committee chair is now Andrew Chin with the help of Wen dong Xu. Education committee chair is Bo Liu with the help of Jeff Ecker. We still hold Abhijeet as Chair of IT committee. And we now create new Membership committee and the new chair is Joo Yup Lee, our secretary general. New Membership committee will help to IT committee to organize strong system for membership management and payment through our website. Everyone will be happy to pay their annual dues through website very soon.

I hope all of you are happy and healthy in the difficult days and will see you directly, not virtually, very soon.

November 24, 2020

Toshiyasu Nakamura, MD, PhD

Immediate Past President, Asia Pacific Wrist Association

Professor, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, School of Medicine, International University of Health and Welfare, Tokyo, Japan

Toshiyasu Nakamura

Message from Past President

We are all so fortunate to have had PC Ho create such a wonderful Wrist Association. I feel very honoured to be the second APWA President. We have a strong and committed Executive Board and Sub-committees, comprising of passionate and experienced colleagues of diverse national background. Please help us continue to build on PC’s legacy, and really make APWA an association that we can all be proud of. Together we can fulfil our mission, which is to promote and advance the concept, knowledge and practice of the surgery for disorders of the wrist.

– Greg Bain, President 2017 -19

Our Founding President’s Vision

We believe as time goes on, wrist surgery will get even more exciting and fascinating. Imagine that arthroscopy becomes bread and butter for everyone, minimal invasive surgery is the norm for all, wrists no longer need to be fused, cartilage can regrow, ligament can heal predictably. We believe that with our conjoint effort and enthusiasm, all these will no longer be dreams one day.

– PC Ho, Founding President 2015-17

Greg Bain, PC Ho

Gather and Excel
At last, wrist enthusiasts in the Asia Pacific area have a niche to gather, to exchange and to excel!

The Asia Pacific Wrist Association (or APWA in brief) was proudly established on 11 April 2015 when 21 determined wrist experts from 10 countries and cities in the Asia Pacific region met at the Prince of Wales Hospital of Hong Kong to discuss and endorse the formation of the Association, a long time dream behind many of this group of dedicated workers and researchers in wrist surgery and therapy. I was lucky enough to have got acquainted with them through our collaboration and education work in this area over the last two decades. We all witness the tremendous outburst in interest and output on this field, and the growing fraternity among the communities, especially in the last 5-10 years. However there is still considerable mismatch between the availability of competent wrist surgeons and therapists, and the patients in need due to the vast area and population we serve, and the extreme diversity of culture, language, social structure and medical system within the Asia Pacific area. Never in our history the desire and determination to make positive progress and advancement in this area is more intense than at the present moment. This need and concern drive us to form a professional association of our own without hesitation.

Activities
Membership application is now open. To encourage participation and collaboration, membership of the Association is on individual basis. Many activities are already on the plot: annual scientific congress, comprehensive review courses, travelling fellowship and training programme, research grant provision, joint center research project, joint registry and data base on specific diseases of interest, young investigator awards, educational media production, website, case discussion forum, publications and even journal. Both arthroscopists and non-arthroscopists are welcome and membership is not confined to surgeons. Therapist, nurses, rehabilitationist, radiologist, biomedical engineer, information technologist, anatomist, basic scientist etc. are all welcome, as long as they “love” the wrist and find the wrist enthralling!

Aims and Objectives of APWA

The aims and objectives of APWA are as follows:

To encourage the clinical application of wrist surgery and other diagnostic and therapeutic methods;
To facilitate exchange of clinical and scientific information, to advance knowledge, concept and clinical skill in the field of wrist disorders and wrist surgery;
To promote research and collaboration in the fields of wrist disorders and wrist surgery among the various Asia-Pacific countries and area; and
To bring together doctors and other medical professionals specializing or with special interest in the aforementioned fields through organizing conferences, educational and training courses, traveling fellowship programmes, and other related scientific activities.

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