IGOT SMART Course(s)

Nigeria SMART Course
November 13-15, 2024

10th Annual MOI Tanzania SMART Course
June 3-6, 2025

SMART Courses

Every year between 20 and 50 million people are permanently disabled from road traffic injuries, and over 6 million die. That’s twice the number of deaths than HIV/AIDS, TB, and Malaria. Many of these are preventable, but local surgeons in countries with limited resources where these accidents are so common lack the training required to perform life-saving procedures.

IGOT’s annual 4-5 day Surgical Management and Reconstructive Training (SMART) course provides specialized training in soft-tissue techniques for orthopaedic surgeons in low-income countries, including Tanzania, Nepal, and Mexico. This is a multidisciplinary course that includes didactics, hands-on workshops, and cadaveric lab sessions alongside expert orthopaedic and plastic surgeon-instructors. IGOT partners with surgeons from partnering academic institutions, including the University of Toronto, the University of Southern California, the University of Washington, and the University of California, Los Angeles.

Our flagship SMART course is held at our headquarters in San Francisco, CA, USA.

June 2024 IGOT hosts over 140 orthopaedic surgeons across East, Central, and South Africa in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Class setting with students

The Need for SMART Courses

Every year, between 20 and 50 million people are permanently disabled from road traffic injuries, and over 6 million die. These numbers are 2x the number of deaths than HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria COMBINED. This burden disproportionately affects those in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

Many of the local surgeons in resource-limited countries lack the training required to perform limb- and life-saving procedures. Our SMART courses equip the surgeons with these skills and knowledge.

2 men drilling into a bone model

The Impact

The IGOT SMART Course model is an innovative approach to address the global disparity in orthopaedic trauma care.
The SMART course provides orthopaedic surgeons in resource-limited settings with the skills and knowledge to successfully perform surgeries to reduce the incidence of amputations.
Each surgeon attending a SMART Course trains 3-5 surgeons creating a ripple effect of education within low-income countries.
Surgeons completing the SMART Course have a 93% success rate in treating patients with post-traumatic limb-threatening conditions.
In a recent study examining the SMART course impact, participants reported that the knowledge and skills gained from this course has significantly changed their practice.

To learn more about IGOT’s SMART Courses and register for upcoming courses, please contact IGOT at igot.oti@ucsf.edu

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Webinars

In addition to the SMART courses, IGOT is offering bi-monthly webinars on various orthopaedic subspecialty topics. These webinars include interactive case discussions with an expert panel of orthopaedic surgeons.

Click here to access our previous course videos.

IGOT Portal

The IGOT Portal is a self-paced, free platform for orthopaedic surgeons throughout the world, providing supplemental educational materials in an online classroom format.

The IGOT Portal reaches orthopaedic surgeons throughout the globe with over 2500 registered uses.
The portal is a novel endeavor that we hope to scale and expand using already existing technology. It strives to leverage our expert network of faculty and partner institutions to crowdsource solutions to surgical cases and meet the needs of orthopaedic surgeons in developing countries.