Orthopaedics

The Department of Orthopedics is a clinical key discipline of Anhui Province and a master's degree granting unit. The department has three wards with a total of 110 beds; it currently has 8 staff members with senior professional titles and 6 with deputy-senior titles; 4 hold doctoral degrees and 10 hold master's degrees.

The Department of Orthopedics is the earliest specialty of its kind established in Anhui. Since its founding, its academic and clinical professional standing has consistently led the province, making enormous contributions to the establishment and popularization of orthopedic specialties throughout Anhui. In the 1950s, Professor Liu Chunsheng successfully developed a dead-space filling therapy for chronic osteomyelitis, curing soldiers with war-wound osteomyelitis from the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, and was awarded a second-class merit citation. The department was among the first in China to apply British titanium-alloy intramedullary nails for intramedullary fixation; from the 1950s to the 1960s it contributed to the cure and control of the then highly prevalent bone and joint tuberculosis. Proximal femoral abduction osteotomy with angle nail internal fixation remains a good method to this day and has had considerable influence in China; the recovery rate of paraplegia caused by spinal tuberculosis reached 76%.

Starting in the 1960s, the department conducted research on soft tissue lesions, including tendon transfer for functional reconstruction, soft tissue release for pain, congenital hip dislocation, and corrective operations of various kinds of pelvic surgery. From the 1970s onward, it carried out in-depth clinical research and treatment of various bone diseases and deformities. After the 1990s, it performed bone cement replacement for limb salvage in bone tumors and resection of pelvic tumors.

In the early 1970s, it successively performed replantation of severed upper limbs, severed lower limbs, cross-leg (transposition) replantation of severed legs, tumor-segment resection with replantation for limb salvage in malignant tumors, and replantation of severed fingers. In the 1980s, it carried out free transplantation of great-toe skin-nail flaps, vascularized skin flap transplantation for thumb reconstruction, tendon and nerve transplantation, brachial plexus repair, scapular-back skin flap transplantation and various other flaps.

In earlier years, it performed double-cup hip arthroplasty; in the 1970s it carried out artificial femoral head replacement; after the 1980s it successively performed total hip replacement, total knee replacement, and long-segment prosthetic replacement. After 2000, it carried out highly difficult joint revision surgery, with revision techniques leading the province. In the 1980s it introduced arthroscopy; after 2000, its arthroscopic treatment of joint diseases reached the advanced provincial level. It also applied rapid prototyping technology to the diagnosis and preoperative design of deformities and post-traumatic joint diseases, improving diagnostic and therapeutic outcomes.

Spinal surgery began in the 1960s. From the 1970s onward, it was successively the first in the province to perform reduction and internal fixation of atlantoaxial dislocation, anterior decompression and internal fixation for cervical spine trauma, corpectomy and fusion for cervical spondylosis, anterior spinal decompression with plate internal fixation, and scoliosis correction. Entering the 2000s, the adoption of artificial vertebral bodies, vertebroplasty, internal fixation of odontoid fractures, and highly difficult cervical spine tumor resection and other advanced spinal internal fixation techniques marks that the department's spinal surgery has entered the advanced ranks nationally.