Leading a Surgical Revolution

Book excerpt: This book describes the 60-year history of the AO Foundation and its impact on the treatment of bone trauma. Originally founded by a group of Swiss surgeons, the AO has since established its osteosynthesis treatment approach to trauma, using surgery and implants, as the global standard. The AO successfully convinced the medical community that surgery of bone trauma was superior to the standard conservative treatment using plaster casts. This new technique meant that patients no longer had to spend long weeks at the hospital in traction, and prevented many disabilities. This book describes the struggle with the medical community, explains how the AO surgeons enlisted the support of an entire industry for their advanced tools and their research and teaching efforts, and details the AO’s evolution into a non-profit foundation that now trains more than 50,000 surgeons, on all continents, every year. The efforts of the AO’s affiliated surgeons, undertaken largely on a volunteer basis and with their own financial resources, serve as a stellar example of social entrepreneurship. Today the AO Foundation numbers over 20,000 surgeon members worldwide, and the industry that emerged to produce related implants and tools employs thousands of skilled staff. Professionals in consulting as well as in healthcare can use this book as a source of successful strategies, and as a blueprint for active social entrepreneurship.