Clinical

I have had the opportunity to participate in several committees that review grants for large surgical societies.  During these sessions, typically two reviewers review each grant in depth and then present a summary to the rest of the committee.  Those reviewers give the grant a score from 1-10, with 1 being a grant that should definitely be funded and 10…

In my pediatric practice, I’ve often wondered if the children that we “fixed” as a child have actually been made better or whether they would have adapted and done just fine on their own. These decisions are made by parents and surgeons since the babies certainly don’t have an opportunity to participate in the decision making. Often it seems we…

In today’s world, we are almost never out of touch.  The advent of the cell phone gave us the potential to be constantly available.  Email allows us to send and receive messages at all hours without disturbing the other party. The popularity of text messaging has added a new, perhaps even less intrusive, form of communication.  Although these advances have…

At a time when cost-effective, evidence-based care is increasingly demanded by patients, payers and our own professional organizations, research on outcomes of treatment has become more common. Over the past 10 years there has been a steady increase in the  levels of evidence reported in most of the journals read by hand surgeons. While this trend is encouraging in appearance,…

The American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons (AAOS) has released a new Clinical Practice Guideline on the Diagnosis and Treatment of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. This document replaces earlier ones on diagnosis, published in 2007, and treatment, which appeared in 2008. There was a widespread perception that the recommendations made in the previous guidelines were weak and did not contribute substantively to…