It is becoming widely accepted that research which considers only the outcome and not the costs associated with new technologies in health care, is of limited value in making decisions about the use of scarce resources. Economic evaluation is becoming a standard feature of clinical research but many published economic evaluations fall short of best practice in their methodology. We have describ...

At present, strong requirements in orthopaedics are still to be met, both in bone and joint substitution and in the repair and regeneration of bone defects. In this framework, tremendous advances in the biomaterials field have been made in the last 50 years where materials intended for biomedical purposes have evolved through three different generations, namely first generation (bioinert materi...

The year 2007 marked the 60th year of Indian Independence, but a sizable number of Indians are waiting to be freed from the gripping pain in their joints and bones. What these patients would like is to reduce, if not end their suffering and improve the health-related quality of life. This is exactly what the Bone and Joint Decade (BJD) — a multi-disciplinary international initiative supported b...