Welcome !

I am an orthopaedic surgeon intent on developing a Biological Joint for patients with early osteo-arthritis. This is now my main aim and so my other interests are represented by other connecting sites, which you will find on the list to the left. These sites are readable for both surgeon, doctor and patient alike, because the main focus is on improving patient care, and I know patients have no difficulty in developing specialist knowledge from the internet.

Surgeons are invited to join the specialist-opinion site. This is intended to provide patients with your personal information on orthopaedic operations, or advice on non-operative management of orthopaedic conditions. It also provides some self-scores for different problems so a patient can come to you with a score already provided. The aim is for the patient to come to you with at least your own web information, and so hopefully off to a good start!

Patients from around the world have been very helpful in providing information on the indications and outcome of different operations. The Outcome Centre at Oswestry Orthopaedic Hospital is run by the Institute of Orthopaedics. Eric Robinson is the current manager and together with Amanda, Taj and Munir is doing a great job of following 5,000 patients with hip resurfacing. The results are posted on the www.outcomecentre.com site.

One method of repairing joints is by regrowing the cartilage from its cells. Inevitably no biological joint can be made without cells and this must be the starting place. Paul Harrison and the team at Oscell provide the special expetise needed for this and also mesenchymal stem cell culture for fracture non-unions. I have treated over 300 patients with chondral defects and the long term results now out to 11 years are good, particularily because the result generaly holds good over time. This long term benefit is the economic justification for the increased cost over other techniques. An MRC funded trial ACTIVE is run by Heather Smith from Oswestry with help from Richard Gray of the Birmingham Trials Centre.

Improving patient care is possible both through research and from teaching. I run a basic science course and several clinical examination courses among others at Oswestry. Several books have been produced and these can all be found and booked or bought on the Orthopaedic-Institute website.

Enjoy my site,

James Richardson