AAOS Now, August 2012
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AAOS Hosts Patient Safety Summit
As a leader in the patient safety movement, the AAOS has consistently been proactive in addressing issues surrounding orthopaedic surgical safety. The Surgical Safety Summit being held this month is just one of the Academy’s efforts to help its members improve orthopaedic surgical safety and reduce complications.
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Preventing RCC from Metastasizing to Bone
Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is the fourth most lethal cancer in the world. Of the estimated 49,000 patients diagnosed with RCC each year in the United States alone, approximately 11,000 will die from the disease. Worldwide, RCC results in more than 100,000 deaths every year. RCC tends to metastasize to bone, giving patients a mean survival rate of only 12 months.
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Is Sex a Risk Factor for Shoulder Instability?
Shoulder instability patterns have been classified in numerous ways in the orthopaedic literature, including the following: Traumatic or atraumatic Voluntary or involuntary Unidirectional or multidirectional. In general, surgeons have believed that traumatic, unidirectional instability patterns are more common in males, and atraumatic, multidirectional instability patterns are more common in females.
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Ensuring that AAOS CPGs Are Used—But Not Abused
Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPGs) are being developed by physicians across all disciplines to determine the evidence base and appropriateness for a particular procedure or technology.
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Get Involved in the CPG Process
Since the completion of the first AAOS Clinical Practice Guideline (CPG) in 2007, the AAOS department of research and scientific affairs, in conjunction with the Guidelines Oversight Committee, has implemented a detailed guideline development process. This process requires substantial input from AAOS member volunteers. As shown in Fig. 1, the opportunities for member involvement occur at various points in the process (in dark tinted boxes).