The COFAS was formed in June of 2002 at the combined meeting of the Canadian and American Orthopaedic Associations. Since then, the COFAS has made considerable progress towards setting up a national study on the outcomes of end stage arthritis of the ankle.

Our mission statement reads:

The COFAS is a group of orthopaedic surgeons who aim to promote excellence in clinical foot and ankle care in Canada by:

1. Serving as the primary organization dedicated to foot and ankle clinical care, education and research in Canada.
   
   
2. Functioning as the leading resource for education of the Canadian public, orthopaedic surgeons, the general medical community, government, and industry on foot and ankle care.
   
   
3. Promoting research in foot and ankle care.
   
   
4. Serving the members as a forum for discussion of problems unique to foot and ankle care in Canada.
   
   
5. Developing resources that will help Canadian Orthopaedic foot and ankle surgeons in addressing local practice-related issues such as quality improvement, coding, reimbursement, legislation, cost of care and access to care.

The COFAS will also hold a meeting during the Canadian Orthopaedic Association's Annual General Meeting. There will be a subspecialty afternoon with a scientific session and some symposia.

If you wish to be involved with the COFAS or one of its studies, please contact one of the COFAS officers or the COA office. We are always looking for volunteers for teaching or helping achieve our various goals. The society is dependent on the volunteer work of surgeons.

We will begin charging a nominal fee of $30.00 CDN for membership after June 2003. This fee will include official recognition of membership for your curriculum vitae and identification as a subspecialty foot and ankle surgeon for patient letterhead. All other surgeons can receive e-mails and contact information by registering their e-mail address with the COA. We wish to involve all surgeons regardless of membership. You could join the COFAS by completing a simple membership application form found in the Membership section of this site.

The COFAS Officers are listed in the Contact Us section of this site.

Dr. Mark Glazebrook and Dr. Johnny Lau have made considerable progress in developing our research program and direction. We wish to start by setting up a database and studying the outcomes of surgical treatment of end stage ankle arthritis. Any surgeon performing ankle fusions or ankle joint replacements are encouraged to submit preoperative and postoperative scoring information so that we can address outcomes for this common orthopaedic problem. Please visit the Research section for more information on the research study and contact information.

We also wish to study the outcomes of surgery on diabetic feet. This is an extremely costly area of care in Canada, with foot complications in diabetic patients costing in the region of 600 million dollars per year in Canada. This information will be posted on the research page in due course.

Patient Information
In time we wish to develop a more extensive Patient Information section. Some of the links currently posted in this section include quality patient information. If patients are having difficulty identifying an orthopaedic surgeon performing foot and ankle procedures, a phone call to an orthopaedic practice group in at your local hospital may allow you to identify a surgeon able to help you. Under the Canada Health Act, all patients must be referred to an orthopaedic surgeon by a family physician.