Orthopaedic Surgery Research
The Department of Orthopaedic Surgery has responded to the changing landscape of medical care. The medical school has adopted EPIC as our electronic medical record. The department has developed outreach programs in Lexington, NC and Clemmons, NC. New ambulatory offices are scheduled to open in August 2013 in a new campus in Advance, NC. This campus will eventually have operating rooms and will become our new facility for managing total joint replacement patients. Our department has developed several strategies for dealing with the reductions in research funding. Wake Forest Innovations is a new division of the Medical Center that awards grants to support and advance translation and commercialization of innovative ideas and products relevant to the mission of the Medical Center. The strength of our department positions us to maintain our research infrastructure and our ability to provide our residents with a variety of research experiences and to support the various research interests of our faculty.
Our faculty is committed to pursuing clinically important research designed to improve patient care. In addition, because research is an integral component of our mission, our department is committed to pursuing innovative translational research while training the next generation of academic orthopaedic clinician surgeons. For example, several members of our faculty are developing nanotechnology and tissue engineering solutions to manage orthopaedic problems.
Zhongyu Li, MD, PhD, Associate Professor with a subspecialty in hand surgery has received a $2.2 million grant from the Department of Defense to evaluate the use of a bioengineered keratin hydrogel to serve as a filler for nerve conduits used in peripheral nerve repair. Dr. Li has also received DOD funding in collaboration with Thomas L. Smith, PhD to study repair of large nerve gaps.
Cristin Ferguson, MD, Associate Professor, one of our sports medicine physicians received a K08 Award from the National Institutes of Health to support her research designing bioengineered meniscal replacements. Dr. Ferguson also was awarded a grant from the Orthopaedic Research and Education Foundation Goldberg Arthritis Research to study the role of growth and differentiation factor 5 (GDF5) in the pathophysiology of osteoarthritis.
Our orthopaedic trauma faculty members are participating in the Major Extremity Trauma Research Consortium (METRC), a multicenter consortium established with support from the Department of Defense to develop a network of clinical study sites to perform clinical outcome studies to provide treatment guidelines for managing high energy orthopaedic trauma in wounded warriors and civilians. Our department is one of 24 core centers and is number four in enrollment of patients into the various METRC studies.
Dan Bracey, MD, one of our physician scientists has received funding from the Orthopaedic Research and Education Foundation and AO North America to develop a novel xenograft-derived bone scaffold for improved treatment of critical bone defects.
Drs. Tuohy, Freehill, and Mannava received funding from Wake Forest Innovations to develop an innovative device for rotator cuff repair.
Please navigate through our website to learn more about our departmental research initiatives.
L. Andrew Koman, MD
Professor and Chair
The Research Enterprise in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery Wake Forest School of Medicine