Participation in the 2024 Peri-Congress Surgical Observation Tour (PCSOT)

In the name of the Most High
At the beginning of the report, I would like to express my gratitude to the organizers of the KSES 2024 congress. In addition to being of a very high academic standard, this international congress, due to having many social programs, provided a good opportunity for us to become familiar with our colleagues all over the world more and more. these friendships will definitely lead to an increase of scientific communication and consequently enhance our knowledge and skills.

This is my second experience of participating in PCSOT. On October 2019, after participating in the 63th annual congress of KOA, I had the honor to spend a few days in kyung Hee university hospital with Professor Yong-Girl Rhee. It was very useful and memorable for me. A positive and very interesting change in the recent PCSOT compared to 2019 was the opportunity to visit a different center every day, giving us the opportunity to meet more centers and more professors, which was very useful, informative and interesting. Here is a summary of our daily visits to different centers:

On Monday April 1st, we went to Neon orthopedic clinic. Dr. Jin-Yong Park gave us a very warm welcome, and after introducing the clinic, we went to the operating room and observed several arthroscopic surgeries on his shoulder, including rotator cuff repair and bony bankart repair. Although I have the experience of performing thousands of shoulder arthroscopy operations. I must admit that observing the operation of any shoulder surgery master can teach me something new, as a beautiful Persian proverb says, "Every flower has its own special smell." And really all South Korean shoulder surgeons are like beautiful flowers, each one has its own pleasant smell, which means that each one has its own special and instructive techniques and methods. After the surgeries, Professor Park gave each of us a package of shoulder surgery equipment as a gift, which is a very good souvenir. When I showed them to my operating room staff, they were surprised by so much kindness and hospitality. In the end, Dr. Park invited us all to have lunch at a Korean restaurant.

On Tuesday, April 2nd, we went to SMC Hospital. For me, seeing the hospital and its environment and operating room again reminded me of the very sweet memories of 2011, when I was a fellow of Professor Jae-Chul Yoo. Although I have visited Prof. Yoo over and over again in international sessions in Europe, Japan and South Korea, and I have a special devotion to him as my mentor, visiting him again in operating room in SMC Hospital brought back all my memories with him. He is a hardworking and cooperative person who never got tired of my so many questions. I will never forget that in 2011 when I was his fellow and he wanted to go to Japan in order to participate in a congress, he apologized to me that he could not teach me anything during the two days that he was in Japan. Anyway after warm welcome, we had opportunity to see his fantastic technique of outbox double row repair of subscapularis tendon tear and also using patch in rotator cuff repair and it was really useful to observe his techniques. As always, the professor was hospitable and invited us to the hospital restaurant.

On Wednesday, the third of April, we went to St. Mary’s hospital of the Catholic university and with a warm welcome from a doctor who was a former fellow and current professor at the hospital, and unfortunately, I don't remember her name, we went to the operating room. And Professor Yang-Soo Kim warmly welcomed us there and we observed some surgical procedures, including using a subacromial patch. In the end, the professor gave us a certificate and invited us all to the hospital restaurant.

On Thursday, April 4th, we went to Myongji Hospital and were warmly welcomed by Professor Yong-Girl Rhee, whom I met before in 2019. We observed several of his surgeries, including tension suture for rotator cuff tendinitis and partial tear and long head of biceps tendon re-routing procedure, which were very interesting to us. At the end of the operations, we left the hospital after having lunch with the professor in the hospital.

Unfortunately, due to the date and time of my return ticket, I could not stay in Seoul on Friday and missed the last day's schedule. In the end, I would like to thank all those who made it possible for us to have this very good, organized and memorable course, and especially the colleagues who picked us up from the hotel to the hospital and vice versa very friendly, especially our dear colleague Dr. Heedong Lee. Thank you very much.

Prof. Hossein Saremi
Orthopedic Hand and shoulder surgeon,
Chief of orthopedic department,
Hamadan university of medical sciences,
Hamadan, IRAN