Orthopaedic Surgery Research
The Department of Orthopaedic Surgery is at the forefront of the recent consolidation of administration between the medical school and the hospital under a single CEO to develop the integrated clinical enterprise of Wake Forest Baptist Health. Our new CEO, John McConnell, has established and implemented a strategic plan and a roadmap to achieve excellence in patient care, education, and research. In addition, the new dean of Wake Forest School of Medicine, Edward Abraham, MD arrived at the medical center in July 2011 and announced his plan to further develop the medical center research initiative. The recent months have been exciting as our department looks toward the future by building our faculty, developing outreach programs for clinical care, and expanding our research initiative. We currently have four research PhD faculty members and over $5 million of support for our research programs.
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 pathology.
Zhongyu Li, MD, PhD, Associate Professor with a subspecialty in hand surgery, received a $2.2 million four year 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.
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.
Our department is participating as a CORE center for 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.
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