Are you losing patients to ‘medical tourism’?

Jennie McKee

AAOS Now explores the growing trend of traveling abroad for medical care As U.S. healthcare costs continue to increase, many Americans are facing difficult choices. Should a 61-year-old uninsured waitress who needs bilateral knee replacement wait until she’s eligible for Medicare before having the surgery because she can’t afford the $100,000 total cost?

AAOS adopts new clinical practice guidelines

Mary Ann Porucznik

During its May meeting, the AAOS Board of Directors adopted two new clinical practice guidelines—one on the diagnosis of carpal tunnel syndrome and the other on the prevention of symptomatic pulmonary embolism (PE) in patients undergoing total hip or total knee arthroplasty. Joshua J.

Orthopaedic astronaut studies bone’s response to stress

An OREF/Zimmer Career Development Award enabled Robert L. Satcher, MD, PhD, to begin studies on ways to replace destroyed bone

Too much stress can fracture bones, as any long-distance runner or orthopaedic surgeon knows. Too little stress and bone fails to develop properly. Traumatic stress and cellular stress from diseases such as cancer can also lead to bone loss. Robert L. Satcher, MD, PhD, is among the researchers studying ways to replace lost bone. A recipient of a 2002 Career Development Award sponsored by the Orthopaedic Research and Education Foundation (OREF) and Zimmer, Dr.

Technology assessment: Whether, when, and how?

Charles Turkelson, PhD

AAOS Board grapples with how to meet an expressed member need Should the AAOS perform technology assessment (TA) for its members, and if so, on what, in what format, and to what end? Those questions were at the heart of a recent Board workshop, held April 18–21, 2007. According to several surveys, members want the AAOS to offer some form of technology assessment. But first, according to AAOS President James H.

Wound management, evacuationkey in treating battlefield injuries

Peter Pollack

During the second Extremity War Injuries symposium, combat physicians shared techniques in transporting patients from war zones to the United States Approximately 70 percent of all traumatic combat wounds in Afghanistan and Iraq involve orthopaedic injury to the extremities, which present significant challenges for transporting these patients from overseas battlefields to definitive care in the United States.

Putting a little sex in your orthopaedic practice

Mary I. O’Connor, MD; Laura L. Tosi, MD

By Mary I. O’Connor, MD, and Laura L. Tosi, MD Not just for women: Is vitamin D the key to bone health? Although men sustain fewer hip fractures than women, their recuperation is significantly more difficult. More men are underdiagnosed and undertreated for osteoporosis after a hip fracture (only about 1 percent of males are discharged with treatment, compared to 25 percent of females), and few FDA-recommended pharmacologic treatments for men with osteoporosis exist.

Treatment update: Using bisphosphonates and PTH for postmenopausal osteoporosis

Benjamin E. Tuy, MD; Joseph Benevenia, MD

Although they have different mechanisms of action, both agents are important interventions in managing osteoporosis An estimated 44 million Americans—55 percent of those 50 years of age and older—are at risk of osteoporosis, according to the National Osteoporosis Foundation. Approximately half of all women and one quarter of all men older than age 50 will have an osteoporosis-related fracture in her or his remaining lifetime. That adds up to more than 1.