Young Arthroplasty Group Special Issue Editorial

The American Association of Hip and Knee Surgeons (AAHKS) Young Arthroplasty Group (YAG) committee was formed in 2018 with the goal of supporting surgeons in early practice [1]. Over the years, YAG has become an influential part of AAHKS, growing to over 800 members comprised of residents, fellows, and surgeons in their first 5 years of practice. YAG has expanded its scope to include educational and networking events at the AAHKS annual meeting, podcasts, Orthopaedic In-Training Exam and American Board of Orthopaedic Surgery exam reviews, as well as research collaboration. This YAG-Arthroplasty Today special issue was designed as an opportunity for YAG members to showcase their research endeavors. Manuscript proposals were solicited from YAG members and selected by the YAG committee to go through the standard peer review process by Arthroplasty Today reviewers. As the 2022-2023 YAG committee chair and an Arthroplasty Today editorial board member and associate editor, I was honored to serve as guest editor of this special issue. I would like to thank Editor-in-Chief Greg Golladay and Deputy Editor Brett Levine for their guidance during this process.

The articles in this issue showcase the priorities of young arthroplasty surgeons today. We are faced with a number of challenges, from joining and building a practice to adopting new technologies, taking on complex cases, and handling the inevitable complications. In “The Practice Experience of an Adult Reconstruction Surgeon: A Cross-Sectional Analysis and Survey of the American Association of Hip and Knee Surgeons Membership,” DeMik et al. present survey data on current practice patterns with the aim of assisting young surgeons in selecting their practice type as well as anticipating future challenges [2].

Understanding medical technological innovations and incorporating them successfully into an arthroplasty practice is another concern facing young surgeons and is addressed from many different facets in this issue. From a medical perspective, Heckmann et al. discuss the exploding use of glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) agonists and their potential pitfalls in “GLP-1 Agonists Used for Medically-Supervised Weight Loss in Patients with Hip and Knee Osteoarthritis: Critical Considerations for the Arthroplasty Surgeon” [3]. The Office Tip by Rainey et al., “Patient Engagement Platforms: How Technology is Impacting Perioperative Communication and Engagement in Total Hip and Knee Arthroplasty,” provides readers with a practical guide to currently available patient engagement technology [4]. For hip and knees surgeons wondering how artificial intelligence will affect the surgical landscape of tomorrow, Mickley et al. provide a comprehensive discussion of current and future artificial intelligence applications in their “Overview of Artificial Intelligence Research within Hip and Knee Arthroplasty” [5].

Young arthroplasty surgeons are often expected to tackle complex cases they may not have encountered during training, requiring creative and occasionally unorthodox solutions. In this issue, Muffly et al. provide detailed surgical tips including intraoperative photographs in “Total Hip Arthroplasty With Subtrochanteric Osteotomy for Crowe IV Dysplasia Using an Extensile Direct Anterior Approach: A Surgical Technique” [6], while Ierardi et al. discuss a rarely-encountered clinical scenario in their case report, “Catastrophic Femoral Component Failure of a Unicompartmental Knee Arthroplasty” [7]. Finally, Gold and Arshi provide young surgeons with emotionally healthy strategies for dealing with the postoperative complications that invariably occur after complex cases in “Dealing With Complications as a Young Surgeon” [8].

The articles discussed above are just a few examples of the wide-ranging topics contained in this YAG-Arthroplasty Today special issue. The common thread connecting these case reports, surgical techniques, original research papers, reviews, and white papers is their relevance to the YAG membership. We appreciate the opportunity to showcase the talent of our members, and we hope that this special issue sheds light on the most important concerns facing early-career arthroplasty surgeons today.

Conflicts of interest

A. Cohen-Rosenblum is a MicroPort speaker, is a paid consultant for Zimmer Biomet and Heraeus, receives financial and material support from JBJS and Elsevier, is an editorial board member of JOA and Arthroplasty Today, and is a board/committee member of AAHKS, RJOS, AAOS, and SICOT.

For full disclosure statements refer to https://doi.org/10.1016/j.artd.2024.101425.