What is the Societal Value of TKA?

Peter Pollack

With all the attention on the cost of health care, an important factor is being overlooked: the impact on society resulting from the treatment of a particular condition. Comparing that impact when both surgical and nonsurgical treatments are available is particularly important in a specialty such as orthopaedics, which focuses on restoring mobility and health.

Taking the Pain Out of Disk Degeneration

Catherine Rategan

Why do some people with disk degeneration experience pain, while others with comparable deterioration have little or no pain? That is a question that clinicians, patients, and employers would like answered. In 2008, a national study found that people in the United States spent a total of 671.1 million days in bed due to back pain—much of it probably related to gradual changes in biomechanics and functionality that occur as the spine, including its intervertebral disks, degenerates.

Sex Differences in Femoroacetabular Impingement

Ali Ashraf, MD; Rafael J. Sierra, MD; Amy L. McIntosh, MD

Femoroacetabular impingement (FAI) is the term given to the mechanism by which two abnormal structural morphologies of the hip may lead to osteoarthritis (OA). FAI can result in early cartilage damage and labral tears, eventually leading to primary OA of the hip. The two structural deformities that encompass FAI are the cam type and the pincer type morphologies.

ORS to Host Basic Science Course

Basic science provides the tools to explain the functions and limitations of the science behind the decisions, treatments, and procedures that are performed in clinical practice every day. Despite the importance of basic science in the treatment of orthopaedic diseases and conditions, however, many university departments do not have the expertise to cover a complete basic science curriculum.

AAOS/ORS Sponsor Bone Quality and Fracture Prevention Research Symposium

Terry Stanton

Osteoporosis and other bone fragility conditions pose an ever-expanding health problem, yet overall these conditions continue to go undermonitored and undertreated. At a recent Bone Quality and Fracture Prevention Research Symposium organized by the AAOS and the Orthopaedic Research Society (ORS), clinicians and researchers gathered to share the current state of knowledge in regard to bone quality and fracture prevention.