
In March 2023 India’s AWR Surgeons hosted over 1700 delegates and over 70 National International Speakers at AWR Deep Impact Conference in Delhi. In this busy megalopolis of over 35 million people the who’s who of Hernia Surgery were joined by an ANZ Hernia delegation including Brad Bidwell, Harsha Chandraratna, Rod Jacobs, Anita Jacombs, Alex Karatassas, Hugh McGregor and David Wardill. It was a 3-day jam-packed programme. Day 1 was a series of 9 practical courses hosted in the premier Surgical Hospitals in Delhi. Covering everything from fundamental of hernia and hiatus hernia surgery for trainees to eTEP, Robotics and open abdominal wall reconstruction skills and techniques. As well as the important adjuncts of Radiology for Hernia Surgeons, soft tissue and wound management and how to set-up data and image collection for professional standards and audit, education and research.
These highly interactive courses set the stage for a big 2-day conference with local and international speakers covering all aspects of hernia surgery and patient care. With 4 Speaking Halls and sessions running from 08:00 to 18:30 there was no topic that was left undiscussed, and we even heard from the Hernia Masters with Todd Heniford, Eric Pauli, David Chen, Brian Jacob, David Ross, Miguel Garcia-Ureña, Jorges Daes, Flavio Malcher and Jan Kukleta providing the international perspective from the US and Europe. Female Hernias and Female Hernia Surgeons also had a focus with a wonderful local and international faculty including Charlotte Horne, Heather Bougard, Sonia Ribas and Mette Willaume. Our Australian delegation contributed to almost every session over the 3-days covering fundamentals of mesh integrations, bacterial biofilms and hernia related nerve injury to hernia “how do I do it” for open and robotic component separation, robotic hernia surgery and what happens when hernia surgery goes wrong. However, the highlight of the conference was the warmth of our Indian hosts, seeing our hernia colleagues from around the globe and a wonderful night of Indian food and culture with a Bollywood Night of Dancing – and yes almost all of the Hernia “Who’s Who” were seen moving to the beat of the drums!