The Wilderness Medicine Society / International Society of Mountain Medicine World Congress was  held in Aviemore in 2007 – a truly inspirational five days. The list of lecturers included many of the world’s most experienced (and most published) expedition and mountain medics. Topics ranged from high altitude physiology to rabies; resuscitation after avalanche to taking clients with medical problems on commercial expeditions. The British climber Steve Venables, who was the guest speaker on our very first Expedition Medicine UK course opened the conference, along with Paul Auerbach, the author of the weight tome Wilderness Medicine ‘bible’.

It was good to catch up with lots of like-minded people and the spirit of cooperation and sharing of information ran throughout the conference. The informal atmosphere lead to a very lively ceilidh on the last night with full toast to the haggis.

We heard details of the Caudwell Xtreme Everest Expedition from Mike Grocott and others from the team. Many people will have seen footage from the expedition during the BBC programmes a few weeks ago. After five years of planning the team undertook a remarkable amount of validated scientific experimentation including femoral artery blood sampling at a height of above 8400m.
Physiological tests were undertaken on two groups of people – the climbers including summiteers, the majority of whom were medical professionals and 203 trekkers. This second group were all volunteers who trekked in groups from Kathmandu up to Everest Base Camp over an identical time scale. All subjects wrote detailed symptom diaries and testing included VO2 max assessments in 4 laboratories set up along the route. Three further laboratories above base camp tested the climbing group.

The climbing party put 10 of the expedition team and 15 Sherpas on the summit of Everest and all members of the team came home without injury. The teams were involved in several rescues during their time on Everest, several individuals giving up their chances of going higher. These including the hazardous rescue of a young Nepali woman left unconscious above 8000m by her party. She was stretchered down back to Base Camp and treated for HACE and severe frostbite by the medical team. She survived with only the loss of one hand and several fingers from the other. The expedition has yielded literally a room full of data that will take many months to process; Caudwell Xtreme Everest will be up there with the Silver Hut Expedition in pushing forward the understanding of the body’s mechanisms for coping with hypoxia.

There were too many excellent lectures to go through individually, but it was particularly good to hear Luanne Freer, our most recent guest speaker on the Expedition Medicine UK course, Chris Imray who is regarded as the possibly Britain’s most experienced advisor on frostbite and David Warrell, who was his usual entertaining self. It was also great to see some familiar faces of medics who have been through one of our courses. I came home inspired to do more. There is so much world out there, let's make the most of it.

Dr Caroline Knox