San Francisco Bay Area Hand Club
Founded by Eugene Kilgore, MD and William Newmeyer, MD
Directed by David L. Nelson, M.D.
The San Francisco Bay Area Hand Club is a group of approximately 130 hand surgeons and 30 hand therapists who meet twice a year. The meetings consist of a social hour, with wine and hors d'oeurvres followed by dinner, and culminating in a talk on a hand surgery topic by a nationally prominant hand surgeon. The Club is open to any surgeon or therapist who treats hand patients. There are no membership dues or applications, and the group's only function is the lectures. Please contact Dr. Nelson, at 1363 South Eliseo Drive, Suite B, Greenbrae, Ca 94904, or at 415-925-0501, to be added to the list or for more information.
History
The San Francisco Bay Area Hand Club has been meeting since about 1970.
Sterling Bunnell was the founding father of hand surgery, and San Francisco was proud to boast of being the location of his practice as well as other early pioneers such as his partners, L.D. Howard and Donald Pratt (surgeons who knew and operated with all three partners said that Bunnell had the discipline to write, but Howard and Pratt were more accomplished surgeons), as well as John Neibauer and Gene Kilgore. But there was no organized Hand Club.
Eric Butler was the spark for its formation. When he was at Kaiser San Jose, he took a sabbatical year in Sweden, Edinburgh, and Denmark, in 1972-1973. This opened his eyes to a broader world of hand surgery and the need to share with and learn from local hand surgeons. When he returned, in 1974 or 1975, he organized meetings of the Kaiser Permanente surgeons who were interested in surgery of the hand and upper extremity. Quarterly meetings brought together 8-10 surgeons for dinner and discussion of hand surgery topics.
A few years later, Avron Daniller, MD, a plastic hand surgeon in private practice in Sacramento, sent a letter to various people, including Eric Butler and Bill Newmeyer, proposing a Hand Club, similar to what he had experienced during his training in plastic and hand surgery at N.Y.U. With this prompting, at the next ASSH annual meeting, Drs. Butler and Newmeyer discussed the idea. Based on the Kaiser meeting format, Bill seized on the idea. Together with his partner, Gene Kilgore, the Bay Area Hand Club arose. John Agee provided encouragement for the surgeons from Sacramento. One of the earlier meetings was held on a Friday evening at the Nut Tree in Vacaville, as a sort of halfway place Bay Area surgeons to join their Sacramento colleagues . Even then it took about two hours to get from the Peninsula to Vacaville. So that idea pretty quickly died, and from there on, it was much more convenient to meet at various Bay Area hospitals. Tony Matan was one of the first members of the club, he and David Lichtman recall some of the early meetings were held at the Officer's Club, at Oak Knoll Naval Medical Center in Oakland, where David Lichtman was Chief of Hand, and later Commanding Officer. Some of the meetings were held in Gene Kilgore's beautiful home in Tiburon, usually in conjunction with meetings of the American College of Surgeons.
The meetings were run for many years by Gene Kilgore and Bill Newmeyer. The leadership passed to David Nelson, MD, in 1992, who has run it since. Nico Lee, MD, has been assisting Dr. Nelson in running the organization since 2016.
The San Francisco Bay Area Hand Society continues their tradition of devotion to scholarship and fellowship in hand surgery.
| atherine Curtin, MD | November 15, 2019 | Chronic Pain: What to do when the Wound has Healed but the Pain Persists |
| Neil Ford Jones, MD | May 28, 2019 | Tendon Transfers for the Posttraumatic Hand |
| Richard Gelberman, MD | November 15, 2018 | Tendon Healing |
| James Chang, MD | April 27, 2018 | Inside Rodin's Hands: Teaching Surgery through Art and Anatomy |
| Matt Tomaino, MD, MBA | November 3, 2017 | Optimizing Team Performance: What Is at Stake? |
| Brian Adams, MD | May 5, 2017 | Optimizing Treatment of the DRUJ |
| David Ring, MD, PhD | November 11, 2016 | The Changing Treatment for Tennis Elbow: Need for Evidence |
| Amy Ladd, MD | May 27, 2016 | First CMC Arthritis |
| Waldo E. Floyd, III | November 13, 2015 | Boutonniere and Swan Neck: The Problems of Intercalated Bones |
| Marin Posner, MD | May 22, 2015 | Patients to Embrace, Patients to Avoid |
| Rusty Fritz, MD | November 14, 2014 | MRI for Hand Surgeons |
Relton McCarroll, MD |
May 8, 2014 | Computerized Preoperative Planning, held at UCSF |
| Charles Eaton, MD | November 8, 2013 | Update on Dupuytren's, held at the Stanford Faculty Club , |
| Michelle Janes, MD | May 24, 2013 | Congenital Differences in Hands |
| Peter Stern, MD | November 9, 2012 | Current Perspectives on the Management of Small Hand Injuries |
| Anne Ouelette, MD | May 18, 2012 | Forearm Instability: The Essex-Lopresti Lesion and the Herbert Sling. |
| Don Lalonde, MD | November 4, 2011 | Epinephrine in the Hand: The Key to 15 Years as a Hand Surgeon without a Tourniquet |
| Vincent "Rod" Hentz, MD and Gary Pess, MD |
May 13, 2011 | Dupuytrens Update: Needle Aponeurotomy, Xiaflex, and Fasciectomy |
| Rob Medoff, MD | November 5, 2010 | Ulnar Shortening Osteotomy |
| Mahesh Mankani, MD, and | May 21, 2010 | Wound VAC: Practical Application for the Hand Surgeon |
| Michael Grafe, MD | (NOTE: this link will not run in Firefox, but will run in Interner Explorer) | |
| Roy Meals, MD | November 6, 2009 | Hematoma Arthroplastyand Distraction for First CMC Arthritis |
| Robert Szabo, MD | May 8, 2009 | Avoiding Dogma in Hand Surgery |
| Henery Buncke, MD | November 7, 2008 | Harry Buncke, MD - The Father of US Microsurgery |
| John Agee, MD | May 9, 2008 | Finger Contractures: The Digit Widget |
| Larry Schneider, MD | May 10, 2007 | Surgeries I No Longer Do |
| Melvin Rossenwasser, MD | November 9, 2006 | Distal Radius Fractures |
| Paul Manske, MD | May 12, 2006 | Writing for (and Reading) the Journal of Hand Surgery |
| Jorge Orbay, MD | November 18, 2005 | Distal Radius Fractures |
| Vincent "Rod" Hentz, MD | May 10, 2005 | Dupuyterns Disease and Collagenase: An Update |
Bowen Y. Wong, MD |
November 12, 2004 | "Nerve Conduction Testing for Hand Surgeons" |
| David Nelson, MD | May 14, 2004 | "Post-Operative Pain Management" |
| Peter Stern, MD | November 7, 2003 | "Current Perspectives on the Management of Small Joint Injuries and Arthrosis" |
| William Newmeyer, MD | May 23, 2003 | "History of the ASSH" |
| Thomas Trumble, MD | Nov 2, 2002 | "Distal Radius Fractures" |
| Louis Gilula, MD | May 10, 2002 | "The PA Approach to Wrist Radiographs" |
| William Geissler, MD | October 9, 2001 | "Arthroscopy and Distal Radius Fractures" |
| Robert Szabo, MD | May 10, 2001 | "Controversies in Carpal Tunnel Syndrome" |
| David Lichtman, MD | October 27, 2000 | "Lunotriquetral Injuries" |
| Arnold-Peter Weiss, MD | May 19, 2000 | "A New Silicon MCP Implant, and Two Fusion Plates" |
| Leonard Ruby, MD | November 12, 1999 | "Wrist Kinematics" |
| Andrew Weiland, MD | May 14, 1999 | "Scaphoid Fractures" |
| William Cooney, MD | November 6, 1998 | "Scaphoid Nonunions" |
| E. F. Shaw Wilgis, MD | May 8, 1998 | "Three Difficult Topics" |
| Gary Poehling, MD | November 11, 1997 | "Wrist Arthroscopy" |
| Hill Hastings, MD | May 9, 1997 | "Finger Fractures" |
| David Green, MD | November 10, 1996 | "Scaphoid Fractures" |
| Alan Freeland, MD | May 10, 1996 | "Proximal Phalanx Fractures" |
| Richard I. Burton, MD | November 10, 1995 | "Managed Care" |
| Ronald Linscheid, MD | May 19, 1995 | "The Distal Radioulnar Joint" |
| Paul Manske, MD | November 11, 1994 | "Tendon Healing" |
| Richard Gelberman, MD | April 20, 1994 | "Carpal Tunnel: Open or Endoscopic?" |
| Julio Talesnik, MD | December 5, 1993 | "Surgeries that I No Longer Perform" |
| Relton McCarroll, MD | June 5, 1993 | "Thumb Reconstruction" |
| Jack Tupper, MD | December 4, 1992 | "Mistakes in Hand Surgery" |
