PROFILE OF HARRIS ORTHOPAEDIC LABORATORY
Highlights of the First Five Decades of the Harris Orthopaedic Laboratory:
- Initiation of the first attack on, followed by
multiple contributions to, the reduction of fatal
pulmonary embolism after hip surgery.
- Important contributions to improved
understanding of the inherent linkage between bone
resorption and formation.
- Major contributions to the success of human limb reimplantation.
- Key contributions to the new understanding of the etiology of osteoarthritis of the hip.
- Unique direct measurement of the pressure in human articular cartilage in vivo during activities of daily living.
- Major contributions to advances in total hip implant design and techniques for both cemented and cementless total hip replacements.
- Significant improvements for fixation of and the functioning of both cemented and cementless THR.
- A major role in unraveling the mysteries of the unique stealth disease, periprosthetic osteolysis.
- Created the new world’s standard for hip simulators, crucial to advancing innovation in hip surgery design and materials.
- Initiation of and direction of the development of
highly crosslinked polyethylenes, an outstanding contribution
to total hip and total knee surgery and a major advance
in the elimination of periprosthetic osteolysis worldwide.
- Major innovations in creating reconstructive hip surgery for arthritis caused by developmental dysplasia and total developmental dislocation.
- Important contributions to the rigorous quantification of both the hip-centered outcomes of surgery of the adult hip and of the individual techniques of hip surgery.
- Creating the world’s first hip registry which included full integration of digital radiographs.
- Established the capacity of highly crosslinked polyethylene
to resist wear with sufficient power to safely permit the use
of femoral heads greater than 32 mm in diameter, and thus
effectively reducing the dislocation rate of metal-on-polyethylene
THR.
- The combined publications from the Harris Laboratory from
1969-2017, exceeding 600 papers, were granted three Kappa Delta
National Orthopaedic Research Awards, 10 Hip Society Awards,
the Hap Paul Award three times, and had the highest number of
citations in four different categories of orthopaedic surgery,
the 100 classic papers in orthopaedic surgery, the 100 most
cited papers in orthopaedic surgery, the 100 most cited papers
in orthopaedic hip research and the 50 highest cited papers
in hip and knee arthroplasty.
