There has been a shift in the delivery of trauma and orthopaedic services from the specialised to the sub-specialised, while being coupled with a greater multidisciplinary involvement. There are many healthcare professionals involved in the care of trauma and orthopaedic patients, ranging from surgeons, other medical specialities, ward and nursing staff, as well as podiatrists, orthotists, physiotherapists, occupational therapists and social workers. As a result, there is no other up-to-date book available that adequately covers the generality of trauma and orthopaedics, and at the same time appreciates the multidisciplinary approach. This book provides a platform allowing all disciplines to learn about the multifaceted care of these patients with an aim to enhance understanding, promote collaboration and allow the optimisation of care for trauma and orthopaedic patients. The book is aimed at doctors, nursing staff, physiotherapists, occupational therapists and all other staff involved in the care of trauma and orthopaedic patients.

Tissue is frequently damaged or lost in injury and disease. There has been an increasing interest in stem cell applications and tissue engineering approaches in surgical practice to deal with damaged or lost tissue. Tissue engineering is an exciting strategy being explored to deal with damaged or lost tissue. It is the science of generating tissue using molecular and cellular techniques, combined with material engineering principles, to replace tissue. This could be in the form of cells with or without matrices. Although there have been developments in almost all surgical disciplines, the greatest advances are being made in orthopaedics, especially in cartilage repair. This is due to many factors including the familiarity with bone marrow derived mesenchymal stem cells and cartilage being a relatively simpler tissue to engineer. Unfortunately significant hurdles remain to be overcome in many areas before tissue engineering becomes more routinely used in clinical practice.

Injuries and disease commonly affect the hand and these can significantly affect the ability of an individual to perform activities of daily living. The use of regional outcome measures or scoring systems is important as it allows comparison between these injuries and disease, and allows clinicians to assess progression and the effects of different treatment modalities. A patient-completed questionnaire is efficient in terms of time and resources, and allows the assessment of outcome without the need to attend an outpatient clinic. The Disability of the Arm, Shoulder and Hand (DASH) questionnaire, the Patient Evaluation Measure (PEM) questionnaire, and the Michigan Hand Outcome (MHO) questionnaire are a few of the region-specific outcome measures commonly used for the hand, and are patient-completed questionnaires. They are frequently used to assess self-reported patient outcome in orthopaedics, rheumatology and neurology. In this book, the validity, reliability, responsiveness and bias of the various questionnaires used for the assessment of the hand is discussed.