Orthopaedic trauma challenges and opportunities in North America

Abstract

Last week, I flew back from a congress on ‘controversies in Orthopaedics’. The faculty was as impressive as the French Alps location; Thierry Judet, Alain Masquelet, Yves Catonne, Philippe Beaufils to name a few, were all discussing their respective topics of predilection. I was surprised to see that only a handful of controversies mentioned were related to orthopaedic trauma. One evening, at dinner, I asked Masquelet and Judet their thoughts on the organisation of orthopaedic trauma in France. The response was unanimous; there was little ‘organisation’ of trauma the way we know it in the USA. For a traumatologist, this sounded like if Lionel Messi stated that he was no longer interested in football to a Barcelona fan. Trauma was not centralised, a handful of surgeons were willing to dedicate their careers to it and trainees performed the majority of cases at night or during weekends. It is clear that in most countries I had the chance to visit, this was more the rule than the exception. It is hard to argue against the fact that the US model of trauma care is the …