Research Committee

Research Committee of FESSH is dedicated to promoting new ideas to improve the future of hand surgery treatments by supporting research activities through grants, organizing research educational events, and setting up infrastructure for on-going research projects/positions within FESSH.

Ongoing projects include launch of research grants, involvement in the FESSH congresses by talks on research options and informal networking events, workshops and webinars on research related topics as well as a special research grant PROMs for Europe.

CURRENT PROJECTS

Continuiation of the established FESSH financed Research Grants. The grants aim to encourage exploratory, translational or developmental research by providing support for the early and conceptual stages of new clinical approaches.  Therefore, these grants are directed towards basic and translational scienceand novel ideas / techniques in hand surgery, as well as clinical studies. The Basic Research Grant and the Clinical Research Grant are FESSH sponsored with €10,000 award each.SH.

PROMs for Europe: Since FESSH is a federation dedicated to the pan-European idea, we aim to enable all member countries to conduct clinical and basic research on the same level, to speak the same scientific language and to be able to compare their results in a valid way. Currently the basic hand assessment tools such as DASH, PRWE and MHQ are not available in all European languages – which is a pre-requisite for producing valid and comparable results in any field of research. Furthermore, the lack of local availability of these questionnaires hinders comparison of patients and results and the creation of international databases. By offering this special grant focused on the validation of the basic hand related assessment instrument – namely DASH, PRWE and the Michigan Hand Questionnaire – the FESSH A+R Committee aims to bridge this gap. Researcher groups can apply for 10.000€ each funded by the Foundation of Hand Surgery, to take over questionnaire translation studies for their countries.

FESSH Research Fellowship: Research is one of the most important ways to improve quality and develop new techniques in handsurgery. With a new Research Fellowship we want to stimulate, assist and foster scientific thinking and scientific working in hand surgery for all surgeons both young and established, who are members of the national societies represented by FESSH. A one-week stay in a dedicated research department of a European hand surgical center is offered to create a forum for exchanging information, techniques and concepts in Europe and help spread research experience.

Future workshops are planned to increase knowledge on how to set up a research infrastructure/write papers/write grant applications etc. Interactive webinars are future planned activities.

Research in Hand Surgery: is it for everyone? 

Maybe you are interested in research but not sure how to get started. Or you just want to learn more about research and how to read a paper properly. The JHSE collects a series of research methodology articles to help both seasoned and new researchers to get started on the research journey, understand which methodology to use and avoid pitfalls.  Check the link below to learn more:  https://journals.sagepub.com/page/jhs/handsurgery?pbEditor=true

COMMITTEE MEMBERS

Prof.  Dr. Leila Harhaus is the chair of the FESSH Research Committee. She is the director of the Department of Hand-, Replantation- and Microsurgery at BG Klinikum Unfallkrankenhaus Berlin and Chair of Hand-, Replantation- and Microsurgery at Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin.  She studied medicine in Mainz and Freiburg and started her residency at the Department for Trauma Surgery, Orthopedics and Plastic Surgery at University Hospital Göttingen, Germany. After three years, she moved to BG Trauma Center Ludwigshafen, where she obtained her board qualification for plastic surgery and two years later for hand surgery. She passed the EBHS Exam in 2019 as “best candidate” and also completed her studies of health economics. During her one-year microsurgical fellowship at Chang Gung Memorial Hospital in Taipei, Taiwan, she began her intensive work in the field of peripheral nerve surgery, which she has since than continued as her clinical and scientific focus. She is leading a large research group working on almost all topics of hand surgery. As a member of numerous societies, she is involved in committee work, leads the guideline work and translational research topics.

Zoi Tzimorota, co-chair of the Research Committee is a consultant plastic surgeon in the Department of Plastic, Reconstructive, Hand Surgery and Burns ICU in G. Papanikolaou Hospital in Thessaloniki, Greece. Her research field, regarding her PhD Thesis, is the study of chemical creation of tendon adhesions and the prevention of them on a new rat model. She has several oral presentations and posters at  Greek and International conferences, participations in congresses as a speaker and publications in peered-reviewed journals. She attends the annual seminar of tendon transfers on the upper limb on fresh frozen cadaveric specimens (https://tendontransferseminar.com), patronized by FESSH, as a speaker and an instructor, since 2018. She was awarded with the BAPRAS (Balkan Association of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery) award on the knowledge area of BURNS in 2015.

Judit Hetthessy, MD PhD, is a Member of the FESSH Research Committee. She worked as a specialist trained Senior Consultant of Hand Surgery, and Assistant Professor at the Department of Orthopedics, Semmelweis University in Hungary. She now works in her own private practice, handling a wide range of elective cases with a focus on secondary reconstruction, rhemuatoid hand, tumors and congenital deformities. She holds a FESSH diploma since 2016.  Dr. Hetthessy is currently also a Member of the Board of the Hungarian Society for Surgery of the Hand and worked as an Assistant Professor at the Science Management Workgroup of the Doctoral School of Semmelweis University for three  years, and is an active PhD mentor, while pursuing research projects herself. Her private practice (Hand Clinic Budapest) is now an accredited training facility for Semmelweis University.

Francesca Toia is an Associate Professor of Plastic Surgery and Chief of the Training Program in Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery at the University of Palermo. She works at the University Hospital “P. Giaccone” of Palermo, a FESSH accredited Hand Trauma and Replantation Center. She specialized in plastic surgery in 2013, received the European Board Hand Surgery Examination Diploma in 2017 and holds a PhD in Experimental Oncology and Surgery. Her training in hand surgery was based in Palermo but included international experience in UK, Sweden, Switzerland and Spain. Her main fields of interest in hand surgery are trauma, nerve surgery, microsurgery, tetrahand and spasticity. She is an active member of SICM (Italian Society for Hand Surgery), EURAPS (European Associations of Plastic Surgeons), SICPRE (Italian Society for Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery) and SIM (Italian Society for Microsurgery) and associate editor of the Plastic and Aesthetic Research Journal.

Mikko Räisänen, MD, is a dedicated hand surgeon and an active member of the FESSH Research Committee. He serves as a part-time Consultant in Hand Surgery at Kuopio University Hospital in Finland and practices in several private clinics. His clinical expertise focuses on wrist and elbow pathologies, with a strong research interest in Dupuytren’s contracture. Dr. Räisänen earned his FESSH Diploma in 2021 and currently serves on the Board of the Finnish Society for Surgery of the Hand. He is a passionate mentor, at the moment supervising over twenty medical student theses and PhD projects. An enthusiastic educator, Dr. Räisänen leads a national webinar series on wrist pathologies for Finnish hand surgeons and plays a key role in organising academic events, including a pre-meeting, wrist arthroscopy course, for the upcoming FESSH Congress in Helsinki.

Antonio Kory: Observer from the Communication Committee           Email: socialmedia@fessh.com