Hugh Owen Thomas is considered to be the father of modern orthopedic surgery: his innovations in this field will pass to silence before being systematically applied in the treatment of the wounded during the First World War.

The road to a modern technique such as intermidullary nails, however, was instead smoothed by the German surgeon Gerhard Küntscher. Thanks to the use of this type of intervention, the healing times for the German soldiers during the Second World War were drastically lower and this rapid recovery promoted the spread of this technique throughout the world.

Around the sixties of the twentieth century, John Charnley, an English orthopedic surgeon, carried out the first techniques of replacement of the hip through the use of prosthetic implants. His research is still today the basis for this type of intervention.

External fixation techniques have undergone evolutions by the American surgeons active during the Vietnam War, but the main contribution is due to the Soviet surgeon Gavril Abramovich Ilizarov, inventor of the apparatus of Ilizarov, and is still used today.

Modern orthopedic surgery tries to apply less and less invasive procedures aimed at making the implanted components more efficient and durable.

Specializations

Orthopedic surgery has several types of specialized areas. Some of these are not exclusively in the field of orthopedic surgery: for example, the treatment of problems related to the foot can still be performed by a podiatrist.

The main specializations are:

• Hand surgery
• Shoulder and elbow surgery
• Foot and ankle surgery
• Vertebral surgery
• Replacement surgery
• Skull reconstruction
• Pediatric orthopedics
• Musculoskeletal oncology
• Sports Orthopedics 
• Orthopedic traumatology

The most common procedures

The most common procedures of orthopedic surgery are:

• Knee arthroscopy and meniscectomy
• Shoulder arthroscopy and decompressionCarpal tunnel treatment
• Knee arthroscopy and chondroplasty
• Removal of a support system
• Knee arthroscopy and anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction (LCA)
• Knee prosthesis
• Neck treatment of the femur
• Trochanter fracture treatment
• Prosthesis in the hip
• Arthroscopy of the shoulder and excision of the distal of the clavicle
• Rotator cuff treatment
• Treatment of radio or ulna fracture
• laminectomy
• Treatment of ankle fracture (bimalleolar type)
• Shoulder arthroscopy and debridement
• Lumbar spinal fusion
• Treatment of fracture of the distal radius
• Disk intervention

Arthroscopy: Arthroscopy is a small orthopedic surgery where, by means of an instrument similar to the endoscope, the arthroscope, you can view an articulation through a small incision. This allows the diagnosis to be carried out with greater precision. Moreover, in this way, the affected part undergoes a less invasive operation than the traditional open surgery, which instead provides the surgical opening of the joint with the consequence of affecting various tissues in the process.

Surgeons see the affected area via a monitor and can sometimes also operate at the same time the diagnosis is performed.

Arthroscopy can be used for any type of joint, but is used more for the knee, shoulder, elbow, post, ankle, foot and hip.

Arthroplasty: Another typical operation of orthopedic surgery is arthroplasty, a type of procedure where the articular surface of a musculoskeletal ligament is replaced, reshaped or realigned through osteotomy or other types of surgical operations. It is typically used in the treatment of pain caused by illness such as arthritis or other types of trauma.

The most common arthroplasty is the implantation of orthopedic prostheses. Other types of arthroplasty interventions are interpositional arthroplasty, excisional or rectal arthroplasty, and osteotomy.

Arthroplasty presents some risks, due to the insertion of a prosthesis inside the body. Thanks to technology developments, prosthetics are becoming increasingly durable, for example through the use of 3D printers that can recreate a personalized retail prosthesis for each patient.