**2. History of the wrist arthroscopy**

Early arthroscopic explorations mostly focused on a knee joint, but M. Burman in the early thirties experimented with a use of arthroscopy in other joints, including the wrist joint. In 1970, the 1.7 mm No. 24 arthroscope was developed, allowing a wide angle of vision and clear focus utilizing a small diameter. M. Watanabe, who started to use arthroscopy in 1950s and developed the famous No. 21, used this scope to examine 21 wrists in 1970–1972. He developed dorsal approaches on the ulnar side of the extensor pollicis longus tendon to access the radiocarpal joint. Watanabe reported on 67 wrist arthroscopies, including visualization of the distal radioulnar joint. He also included 39 arthroscopies of the thumb carpometacarpal joint and metacarpophalangeal joints as well as 9 interphalangeal joint arthroscopies [1]. Y.C. Chen was an another enthusiast and pioneer of the wrist arthroscopy in 1970s. In 1979 he published an article about 90 arthroscopies of the wrist and finger joints in 34 clinical cases and 2 amputed arms with No.24 arthroscope. Eighty-four wrist and finger joints of four cadavers and two amputated arms were also dissected for macroscopic observation. This article was also illustrated with some color photographies taken with arthroscope [2].

In 1986 Terry Whipple published paper on wrist artrhroscopy technics and described the safe wrist artrhroscopy portals which are still used today [3]. The first wrist arthroscopy course was organized by Terry Whipple, Gary Poehling and James Roth in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA in 1986. The first textbook dedicated to the wrist arthroscopy was published in 1992 by T. Whipple. During the next decades the popularity of the wrist arthroscopy has grown, new indications and techniques have been developed. In 1997 P.C.Ho organized the 1st Hong Kong Wrist Arthroscopy course. With growing international interest in wrist arthroscopy, Christophe Mathoulin founded the European Wrist Arthroscopy Society (EWAS) in 2005 and the first EWAS cadaveric wrist arthroscopy course was organized in Strasbourg. In

#### **Figure 1.** *Authors attending their first wrist arthroscopy course in Rotterdam in 2009 – Uldis Krustins (left), Janis Krustins (right).*

2015 P.C. Ho and G. Bein developed the Asian Pacific Wrist Association (APWA). Both of them are wrist-specific international educational organizations with worldwide network of wrist arthroscopy courses and workshops (**Figure 1**). In 2019, EWAS evolved into the IWAS – International Wrist Arthroscopy Society.
