Birgit Simone Werner 1981-2019
Dear Friends,
With great sadness we inform you of the passing of our young well-liked colleague, valued friend and ordinary SECEC member Birgit Simone Werner.
We missed her first time since 1o years at the Annual Congress of the German Shoulder and Elbow Society (DVSE) in St. Gallen and everybody was shocked by the message from her family that she lost her last fight against a serious disease Wednesday night, May 15th at the age of 38 years.
I know her since 2005 as she worked as a talented student under my supervision for her thesis at the University of Würzburg/Germany, where she later attended her training as junior doctor at the department of Orthopedics, König-Ludwig-Haus and established the local shoulder arthroplasty registry.
From 2010-2011 she continued with her training as resident at our department in Bad Neustadt and contributed so much to the success of this new department. After her graduate as orthopedic surgeon in Osnabrück she attended a fellowship in Lyon at the Centre Orthopédique Santy working with G. Walch, L. Neyton and A. Godenèche, which was certainly a milestone in her professional career. Birgit was a true European character: Due to her excellent language skills in French and English and her love to the French life style she enjoyed so much every opportunity to visit this country.
2014 she returned as consultant to our department in Bad Neustadt.
She was involved in numerous clinical research projects in Germany and France mainly related to shoulder arthroplasty, 3D planning software and arthroplasty registry organization. She was one of our most promising young researchers and has published more than 30 articles in different international journals and handbooks. She attended since 2009 almost all annual congresses of SECEC and the DVSE - mostly as respected speaker of podium presentations and instructional courses.
However, due to the restrictions of her disease she could unfortunately not finish here almost completed PhD work which was focused on biomechanical and clinical aspects of revision shoulder arthroplasty.
Birgit will be missed by all, and she is on our prayers.
Frank Gohlke
