IFICS: International Fractures in Children Symposium
An inspiration which gave birth to a thought which became a reality
It was Prof. Kaye Wilkins who exposed most of us to the beautiful world of management of children’s fractures by his presentations at Posicon 2000.
Paediatric fractures were being treated in India, but not a great deal of organised thought went into it and things were left to remodel as it were many times.
As residents we never taught differently about children’s fractures like the AO principles were followed for adult trauma and there was a serious knowledge gap.
All main conferences like WIROC, Traumacon, Moacon had very little time allotted to Children’s fractures though the sessions were always a hit with delegates.
It was a wintery morning in Pune when Taral and I were brainstorming about what we could do about it as we needed a meeting dedicated to Children’s Fractures and this is how IFICS was born in 2013.
There was an inaugural session on July 17 Sunday morning Hinduja Hospital organised by Taral where Shital Parikh was invited as a guest speaker. The meeting had seeds of a full-fledged 3 days course dedicated to Paediatric trauma.
The 1st major conference was held in Pune 2014 on August 1st - 3rd in a plush venue of JW Marriott It was a residential meeting dedicated to Children’s fractures and we had 180 registrations with Faculty Dr. Shital Parikh from USA, Dr. Hemmadi and Dr. Carpenter from UK and Dr. Song from South Korea.
The next IFICS 2015 was held in Mumbai at CPS Parel and was the 1st time we live-streamed the meeting via internet. The meeting was attended on a web platform by 1700 delegates from all across Asia and Middle East Australia and also some parts of Europe. These delegates watched the discussions from their centres / home and could interact via WhatsApp. I think it was a first of its kind experiment in India. Dr Shital Parikh, the very much a founder member was there along with Indian Faculty. We also released our 1st Journal issue - IJPO on supracondylar fractures.
IFICS 2016 Ahmedabad was a great success too with over 160 delegates and was well conducted by Dr. Premal Naik another founder member of IFICS. Dr. James Hui Singapore and Dr. Carly Vuillermin from Boston participated as foreign faculty.
IFICS returned to Pune in 2017 and was the largest and grandest held so far with 230 delegates from all over India with online Lectures by Scott Mubarak, San Deigo, Peter Waters, Boston and Charles Mehlman Ohio. As a routine, Dr. Shital Parikh was also a part.
2017 also saw the birth of IFICS express a shortened version of IFICS at Jaipur, Colombo and Dhaka. We added web lectures by international faculty such as Peter Waters, Don Bae, Scott Mubarak, Charles Mehlmann, Sanjeev Sabarwal and Kishore Mulpuri.
IFICS 2018 at Ganga Hospital Coimbatore was unique as it became an operative course for the first time and various surgical demonstrations could be shown to delegates. We were lucky to have Dr Alwin Crawford and Dr. James Hui for the meeting organised by Dr. Venkatadass
IFICS 2019 was conducted at the pink city of Jaipur By Dr. Kapil Gangwal and it was a splendid success with break out workshops and interactive sessions. Delegate case presentation sessions were the highlights of this meeting.
In 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic IFICS at Chittagong in March and Pune in August had to be cancelled but will be presented in September 2020 as a Web Conference.
