Coimbatore : Dr S Rajasekaran, Director of the city-based Ganga Hospital, became the first Asian Orthopaedic Surgeon, to be conferred with the prestigious ‘Harold Tscherene teaching award by the International Society of Orthopaedic Surgery and Traumatology.(SICOT).

The award was presented for devising the now popular ‘Ganga Hospital open injury score’ which guides the surgeon on the crucial decision of salvage in severely injured limbs.

Injury Score helps the surgeon to evaluate the severity of three components of the limb, the covering tissues, the functional tissues and the structural tissues on a scale of 1-5 and adds a co-morbidity score so that an accurate assessment of the severity and complexity of injury is made.

Unlike the other scores which were in existence before, the Ganga Hospital score also helps the surgeon to predict the outcome and also predict various treatment para metres as the probable number of inpatient stay days, number of secondary surgeries, the possible complications and also to guide in the timing and nature of soft tissue and bone reconstruction, an Hospital release said Friday.

The score is now widely followed around the world and is also extensively published in all the important textbooks of orthopaedic and trauma surgery.

While handing over the prestigious award, President of the German Polytrauma group, Professor Hans Christoph Pape mentioned that the Ganga score has significantly improved the understanding of surgeons in evaluation of severely injured limbs as it helps them to focus on the severity of injury of every single tissue in the limb and assessing the patient as a whole by considering the Co -morbidity of the patient. This has led to changes in concepts of treatment for the benefit of the patient.

SICOT is the largest orthopaedic international community which has more than 30,000 members from 127 countries spread across all the continents and has an annual meeting which is positioned in different parts of the world every year.

The award was presented during the world orthopaedic meet held in Muscat, recently where more than 3,500 delegates from 127 countries participated to discuss the latest developments and technologies in orthopaedic surgery.