Editorial Technologies Impacting Knee Surgery

摘要

Whenever young men gather regularly on green autumn fields, or winter ice, or polished wooden floors to dispute the physical possession and position of various leather and rubber objects according to certain rules, sooner or later somebody is going to get hurt.Thomas B. Quigley, MD (1933) Harvard University Team Physician Here in the Midwest we have enjoyed a spectacular autumn with nearly six weeks of cloudless, glorious weather that has augmented the pageantry of our weekend passion-college and professional football. As a college football junkie, I find myself glued to the television throughout Saturday watching these warriors play our national pastime. A former intercollegiate football and baseball player myself, bilateral "unhappy triads" ended prematurely my playing days. As young men are carted off the field I wonder what their knees will be like in 5, 10, and 20 years. Certainly our technologies have dramatically improved since the days of primary repairs, complete routine menis-cectomies, arthrotomies, and long leg casts. Sound archaic? What about today? Arthroscopic assisted reconstructions, minimally-invasive arthroplasties, partial meniscec-tomies, meniscal repairs, meniscal transplants, biplanar osteotomies, articular cartilage transplantation, cultured autologous chondrocytes for implantation, viscosupple-mentation, glucosamine...sounds exciting! We have an array of tools in our "toolbox" to help today's patients. Where will we be in 10 or 20 years as today's efforts may not be apparent or recognized until then? Will today's technologies be antiquated? So many questions and so few answers. Each of this issue's articles touches on today's technologies impacting today's, yesterday's, and tomorrow's warriors.