ISKAST; the Way We Have Made and Upfront

Dr. Masaki Watanabe, one of the Japanese orthopedic surgeons, is known as the “father of modern and interventional arthroscopy” after developing sophisticated endoscopic instruments using electronics and optics, which became popular in Japan in the post–World War II era (1). Before him, Professor Kenji Takagi in Tokyo has traditionally been credited with performing the first arthroscopic examination of a knee joint, in 1919. He used a 7.3 mm cystoscope for his first knee arthroscopies (2). In 1969, Dr. Richard O’Connor visited Dr. Watanabe after which he popularized knee arthroscopy in the United States in 1960-70s (3). The history of arthroscopic surgery in Iran goes back to early 1970s, when Dr. Heshmat Shahriaree was practicing at Shafa Yahyaiean Hospital in Tehran (4, 5). In those years, he was performing his first cases of knee arthroscopy in Tehran using very simple instruments. After the Islamic Revolution in 1979, he left the country and came back to the United States when he published the O’Connor’s Textbook of Arthroscopic Surgery in 1984 (6).