The Present and Future of Genomics in Adult Reconstructive Orthopaedic Surgery

As of 2015, members of the "baby boomer generation" comprise 75 million people in the growing United States population. Many of these individuals will be facing the need for total hip or knee replacement. Currently, the age of onset of osteoarthritis continues to decrease and the need for total joint replacements continues to increase. In current practice, nearly all patients undergoing joint replacement receive similar preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative management strategies. However, wide variability in outcomes and satisfaction with total joint replacement still remain. The key to understanding the cause for such varied outcomes may lie in our understanding of the genetic basis of degenerative joint disease. The future of "orthogenomic" research should be centered on clinical application focusing on early preoperative identification of at-risk patients. The goal is to establish twenty-first-century patient-specific strategies for optimizing results and expectations after adult reconstructive surgery.