Paulo Rego , Hospital da Luz Lisboa orthopedist, was admitted as effective member of the International Hip Society (IHS) , an exclusive scientific society of orthopaedic surgeons subspecialized in hip surgery with proven results of clinical and research excellence. The physician is the only Portuguese surgeon integrating this society, which was founded in 1976 with a fixed limit of a hundred members around the world, all of them leaders in training, teaching, and education in their respective countries and with a renowned history of scientific dissemination worldwide. The admission of Paulo Rego was formally announced in May this year, in Athens, during the annual meeting of IHS. The admission of members goes through a process of detailed curricular analysis, voting by other members, and the periodic presentation of original research papers in the meetings of this society. Coordinator of Hospital da Luz Lisboa Orthopedy Service and professor of Orthopedy at the Medical School of Lisbon University, Paulo Rego has dedicated himself right from the beginning of his career to the hip preservation surgery, having perfected techniques of arthroscopy, open surgery and complex deformity surgery to treat femoral-acetabular impingement, hip dysplasia and severe developmental deformities in adolescents and young adults. Over the past few years, he has performed over a thousand joint preservation surgeries, the most adequate solution in the case of adolescent or young adult patients, in alternative to prosthesis placement. He received a doctor degree in Medicine and Orthopaedics in 2017 by the Lisbon University, where he teaches, and published several papers in the most renowned scientific journals of the specialty. His doctorate thesis – entitled “Femoral-acetabular impingement: contribution to the knowledge on its pathophysiology and analysis of surgery results” – was based on the anatomical research of femoral head arterial perfusion, on situations of deformity, and demonstration of results in a population of about two hundred patients. In 2017, for instance, he described in detail and for the first time in literature the intraosseous path of blood circulation inside the femoral head, thus contributing to enhance safety of arthroscopy procedures to treat femoral-acetabular impingement. In 2020, together with radiologist Vasco Mascarenhas , he leaded the project “Acordo de Lisboa” (Lisbon Agreement), which established an international consensus of specialists in these areas, concerning the criteria to apply in radiology exams to diagnose and evaluate hip pathology in adolescents and young adults. Luz Saúde and Hospital da Luz gratefully acknowledge the dedication and engagement of Paulo Rego in the healthcare provided to patients and in the international scientific dissemination of this institution and wish him the best success, both at professional and personal level.
