London to Oxford!

Our stay in London with the Great Ormond Street group was, as with every other center that we have attended thus far, a fantastic experience.  We learned about the clubfoot and congenital hand programs at (oh my) GOSH, and also spent time in the clinics.  I have to say, from a food standpoint, we had three fantastic dinners in London (really! - no jokes about English food).  Below is a picture from dinner at the OXO tower.  We had a window seat with a 270 degree view of London.  Thanks Deborah, what a beautiful city!

As Michelle mentioned last post, I was able to spend some time at the British Museum.  In the ancient greek section, I ran across the following displays on medicine.  Note the preoperative exam by the ancient pediatric orthopedic surgeon.  And you think that your osteotomes need sharpening!

Tuesday morning, we headed for Oxford by "coach"......no horses needed:

In Oxford we met our local host Tim Theologis.  We visited the relatively new orthopaedic facility, Nuffield Orthopaedic Center.......










......which was incidentally the former home of Professor GR Girdlestone.  So much history here!

We took a tour of the Botnar Research Center.  This state of the art facility is entirely devoted to the investigation of musculoskeletal basic science, including biochemistry, physiology and bioengineering.

This visit was followed by a tour of their beautiful gait lab and an introduction to some of the work promoted by this center.  Tim Theologis, Rachel Buckingham, Andy Wainwright and the rest of this impressive group are clearly on the leading edge of care for children with cerebral palsy:

On Wednesday, we spent the morning in clinic and the afternoon giving and listening to lectures.  The highlight for me was the review by Colin Nnadi of his early experience with magnetically controlled growing rods. That night we had dinner at St. Hugh's College (one of the 38 colleges composing this most ancient of universities).

And celebrated with St. Hugh's own Bubbly!

Thursday morning was spent in the operating room with Mr. Theologis:

And then had a few hours to tour around this most spectacular of University towns:

All in all, we could not have finished our fellowship tour of Europe with any better of an experience, nor with more gracious hosts.  Thank you to Tim, Rachel and Andy and thank you POSNA and EPOS for the experience of a lifetime!

We arrived in London on Saturday afternoon where it was a bit rainy.  We are staying at the Goodenough Club (great name!) which is just around the corner from Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH).

View of Mecklenburgh square from my window

We had a great curry for dinner Saturday night.  On Sunday, we split up to do some exploring - Matt at the Tate Modern (where a mirror hung on the wall allows the person to read their own expression into the artwork), Klane at the British Museum, and I went exploring and shopping.  The weather cleared and we went to the London Eye in the evening.

Here we are getting ready for the 4-D experience (?)

Next some great pictures of the sights! - both from the ground and from the air.

Shakespear's Globe Theater on our stroll down the Thames.

A great group!

We are headed to GOSH this morning for a day of clinics and talks. 

Vienna, Austria

Vienna, Austria.........what a beautiful city!  We arrived here on Wednesday from Aarhus to gorgeous spring weather.  The temperatures have been a "warm" welcome from the colds of Scandanavia.  Professor Franz Frill, of Orthadisches Spital Speising, has been our most gracious host.

As you can see above right, limb reconstruction is a big part of what this group specializes in.  Of course, they also have expertise in many other aspects of pediatric orthopaedics, including cerebral palsy, DDH and skeletal dysplasias.  On day one, we were welcomed into the OR with Dr. Walter Strobl, who specializes in cerbral palsy.  He shared with us his technique of percutaneous myotomy for the treatment of spasticity (here Michelle joins in the fun!):

That night we were treated to a dinner of traditional Viennese food with Professor Grill.  There we ate Wiener Schnitzel.  This is not a hot dog!  It is pretty much veal scallopine, flattened, breaded and fried.  Absolutely delicious!  The next morning it was back to the hospital.  Morning rounds and case review were followed by the limb reconstruction outpatient clinic.  Professor Grill and his colleague, Dr. Rudolf (Rudi) Ganger, see an amazing array of patients with limb deficiencies and post traumatic deformities.  They're tool of choice is the Taylor Spatial Frame.  That afternoon, we were treated to a private tour of Vienna.  Our host, Ulrich (Uli) Hahnkamper was a terrific guide (a little plug for Uli - highly recommended!).

Our tour started outside the Ringstrasse.  This street (strasse) denotes the site of the original medieval wall which made a "ring" around the city.  The wall was torn down in the 1800's, during the reign of Emperor Fraz Joseph, and converted into a beautiful tree-lined boulevard.  The day included a trip to the Belvedere Palace and the home of Sigmund Freud.  Unfortunately, his couch has been moved to London, so we couldn't lay down for a rest!

Joining us for the tour was Professor Tae-Joon Cho.  He was visiting from Seoul National University Children's Hospital.  His presence was an added bonus to the trip, as he is incredibly knowledgable and friendly.Dinner that evening was again fantastic.  This was at the Do & Co Stephansplatz.  The view of Stephansdom (The Cathedral of St. Stephan) was incredible.  The food and drink were equally impressive!

Back to the Hospital the next day, we gave presentations to the hospital staff, which was followed by time in the OR.  We were then treated to a fantastic mini-course in hip ultrasonography by Dr. Renata Pospischill.

      

This was followed by more time in the OR with Prof. Grill and Dr. Posposchill, as they performed an open reduction for a child with DDH.

Of course, after all of this work, we were really hungry!  So we headed back to downtown Vienna and enjoyed some traditional Viennese sausages.  We were joined by Dr. Matthias Pallamar:

Sites for the day included a private tour of the Lipizzan horse stables, very few people get this close to the Lipizzaners.  Our tour guide, Uli, said that he never had had such an opportunity (thanks to Prof. Grill).  We also toured the inner city this time (inside the ringstrasse), which included the home of Amadeus Mozart and an inside view of St. Stephan's Cathedral:

       

What an amazing city!  I think that we all would love to arrange a return visit to this most historic place.  This is the view from the small summer cottage of the Hapsburgs, Park Shonbrunn this morning.  Just breathtaking!

Off to London!

On the road again...

Just like that our time in Aarhus has come and gone and we are on the road again.

We had a great time here in Denmark. Yesterday we got back in to the operating room and assisted on two PAO's performed by Dr. Kjeld Soballe (see below)...he has developed a very nice approach that we all enjoyed learning.

Traveling Fellows and Dr. Soballe

                                                        Michelle getting gowned up!

                   Matt awaiting his gloves...not the attending here so back to being gowned second!

Two sexy Danish surgeons in their tights (shirts) and whites (shoes)!

After a long day in the OR we regrouped back in our host Bjarne Moller-Madsen's office for some late afternoon refreshments...what better choice after the OR then coffee, tequila, or beer...any guesses to who choose what?

Ah Bjarne...quickly becoming a mentor in ALL aspects of our lives. No wonder the Danes are so happy!

Finally a wondeful dinner at a small French resturant with some of the orthopaedic staff from the hospital.

Today we are out early to the airport and make our way to Vienna...more to come from Austria!

Arrival in Aarhus Denmark

Sunday we waved goodbye to Helsinki and flew out over frozen lakes and arrived in Aarhus Denmark yesterday in the early afternoon.  Aarhus is the second largest city in Denmark.

A picture of the airport.

We were met by our gracious host Bjarne Moller-Madsen at the Aarhus airport and our bags were larger than his entire car! Our luggage took a taxi to the hotel and we took a great tour of Mols and the beautiful coastline between the airport and Aarhus - full of beautiful farms and windmills (historic and modern).

Here we are with Bjarne in the lobby of our hotel.  We are staying in a lovely hotel, the Helnan Marselis Hotel, which is situated on the shore with a view of the bay and the ships as they come in. 

This is a picture of the hotel from the website.

Our first day at Aarhus Universtiy Hospital started with danish and coffee for breakfast.

We had a morning of lectures by the PhD students and POSNA fellows.  This was filled with a lively exchange of ideas about research and treatment for the growth plate, OI, SCFE, and MPS.  We also learned Klane's ancestors are from a town not far away (Jens Jensen and family).

Here is Martin Gottliebsen who won the EPOS award for best basic science paper last week.

Juan Manuel Shiguetomi Medina from Mexico is a PhD student studying radiofrequency ablation and the growth plate.

Ole Rahbek smiles for the camera.  We also toured the Skejby Hospital laboratory where surgery is performed in the lab setting with state of the art ORs, imaging (all MRIs are 50% patient time, 50% research time), and lab equipment (MTS, confocal microscopy, histology, microCT).  Tonight is dinner at a local restaurant.  More blogging tomorrow.