What Is Orthopedics? A Research Guide

Orthopedics (also spelled orthopaedics, and often called orthopedic or orthopaedic surgery in its clinical form) is the branch of medicine and biomedical science concerned with the musculoskeletal system: bones, joints, cartilage, ligaments, tendons, muscles and the nerves that serve them. It is both a surgical and nonoperative clinical specialty, in which physicians called orthopedic surgeons diagnose and treat injuries, deformities and degenerative conditions, and a research discipline that draws on engineering, materials science, biology, imaging and clinical trial science. This guide explains what orthopedics covers and how its research subfields divide up, then adds the research-administration layer that generic overviews leave out: how the field is funded, how implants and devices reach patients, what the main societies and journals are, and what training typically looks like. It is educational, not medical advice.

What Is Orthopedics?

The word was coined by the French physician Nicolas Andry, who published a book titled Orthopedie in 1741, building it from the Greek words orthos (straight) and paidios (child). His original concern was preventing and correcting deformities in children, which is why the field’s old symbol, a young tree tied to a straight stake, shows up in the logos of several orthopedic organizations. Today the discipline is far broader than pediatric deformity, and the name is a historical artifact rather than a description of scope.

Modern orthopedics is organized around a few recurring questions:

How do musculoskeletal tissues form, bear load, heal and degrade? Bone remodeling, cartilage biology, tendon-to-bone healing and the course of osteoarthritis are the basic-science foundation of the field.
How is a fracture, tear, deformity or degenerative joint best treated, and when is surgery better than not operating? Much orthopedic research is comparative: surgery versus rehabilitation, one fixation method versus another, one implant design versus another.
How can a damaged joint or bone be repaired or replaced? This is where implants, biomaterials and surgical technique meet, and where orthopedics overlaps most with engineering.
How do we measure whether a patient is better? Pain, function, range of motion, imaging and patient-reported outcome measures all feed into trial design and into registry follow-up of implants.

Orthopedics vs. Orthopaedics vs. Orthopedic Surgery

The spelling difference is regional: “orthopaedics” is the usual form in the United Kingdom and much of the Commonwealth and appears in the names of several U.S. bodies too (the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons and the Orthopaedic Research Society both use the “ae” spelling), while “orthopedics” is common in American general usage. They mean the same field. “Orthopedic surgery” names the surgical specialty and the physicians who practice it; “orthopedics” is the wider term that also covers nonoperative care, rehabilitation interfaces and the research enterprise. Searching under either spelling is necessary when you look for funding opportunities, literature or committee names.

Scope: What Does Orthopedics Cover?

Orthopedics spans the whole musculoskeletal system and the conditions that affect it across the lifespan:

Trauma and fractures, from simple breaks to complex injuries involving multiple bones or joints.
Degenerative conditions, above all osteoarthritis of the hip, knee, shoulder and spine, and the joint replacement surgery used to treat advanced disease.
Sports and overuse injuries, such as ligament and meniscus tears and tendon problems, where the field overlaps with sports medicine and with kinesiology.
Spine disorders, including deformity, degenerative disease and injury.
Pediatric conditions, including congenital and developmental problems of the limbs, hips and spine.
Musculoskeletal tumors, bone and soft-tissue sarcomas and metastatic disease affecting bone.
Metabolic bone disease and fragility fractures, such as osteoporosis, which the field shares with endocrinology and with rheumatology.

Inflammatory and autoimmune joint disease is mostly the territory of rheumatology, which manages these conditions medically; orthopedic surgeons are involved when joint damage needs reconstruction. The two fields share the same NIH home institute and many research questions, and the relationship is described in What Is Rheumatology?

Major Subspecialties and Research Areas

Clinical orthopedics divides into recognized subspecialty areas, and each has its own research community, fellowship training and, often, its own society:

Adult reconstruction (hip and knee arthroplasty), the area most closely tied to implant design, bearing materials, fixation and long-term registry surveillance.
Orthopedic trauma, focused on fracture fixation, infection after fracture surgery and healing.
Sports medicine, including arthroscopic surgery and ligament, meniscus and cartilage repair.
Spine surgery, studying fusion, motion-preserving implants and outcomes of surgery for degenerative disease.
Shoulder and elbow, hand and upper extremity, and foot and ankle surgery.
Pediatric orthopedics, musculoskeletal oncology and orthopedic rehabilitation.

On the research side, work is commonly grouped by the question being asked rather than the anatomical region. Typical themes include bone and cartilage biology, regenerative medicine and tissue engineering, biomechanics, biomaterials and implant performance, orthopedic infection, imaging, and clinical outcomes and health services research.

How Orthopedics Relates to Neighboring Disciplines

Orthopedics is unusually interdisciplinary, and many of its research results come from people who are not surgeons. The closest neighbors are:

Biomechanics. Applying mechanics to biological tissue is central to understanding fracture, joint loading, gait and implant wear. See What Is Biomechanics?
Biomedical engineering. Implant design, imaging systems, surgical robotics and tissue engineering are engineering problems with orthopedic applications. See What Is Biomedical Engineering?
Materials science. Metals, polymers, ceramics and bone cements determine implant strength, wear and biocompatibility. See What Is Materials Science?
Kinesiology and rehabilitation science. Movement, exercise and recovery after surgery or injury. See What Is Kinesiology?
Radiology. Plain film, CT and MRI define most orthopedic diagnoses and are also research outcome measures. See What Is Radiology?
Rheumatology and endocrinology, for inflammatory joint disease and metabolic bone disease respectively.

Methods and Tools

Orthopedic research uses the full range of biomedical methods, with a few that are particular to the field:

Laboratory and preclinical work. Cell culture, histology and mechanical testing of bone, cartilage and constructs are standard, along with animal models of fracture healing, osteoarthritis and implant integration. Animal work carries its own oversight obligations; see animal research ethics.
Biomechanical testing and modeling. Cadaveric testing, bench testing of implants and fixation constructs, motion capture and finite element modeling are used to predict how a device or repair will behave under load.
Imaging. Radiographs, CT, MRI and increasingly quantitative and computational image analysis are used both for diagnosis and as study endpoints.
Randomized and comparative trials. Surgical trials are hard to blind, have learning-curve effects for the surgeon, and often compare procedures against nonoperative care, so trial design choices matter a great deal. See placebo-controlled study design for how placebo and sham control concepts apply, and non-inferiority vs. superiority trial design, which is a common choice when a newer technique is compared with an established one.
Registries and observational research. Because implants are used for years or decades, national and institutional joint replacement registries that track revision rates over time are an important source of evidence on device performance in routine use.
Patient-reported outcomes. Pain and function questionnaires are the most common outcome in elective orthopedic trials. See the visual analogue scale and how a minimal clinically important difference is estimated.

Implants, Devices and Regulatory Research

Orthopedics is one of the most device-intensive medical fields. Joint replacements, fracture plates, screws, rods, spinal implants, bone cements, braces and surgical navigation and robotic systems are all regulated medical devices, so a large share of orthopedic research is device research. For the general definition and regulatory framing, see What Is a Medical Device?

In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration regulates these products as devices and assigns them to risk classes. Many orthopedic devices reach the market by showing they are substantially equivalent to a predicate through the 510(k) route (see Special vs. Abbreviated vs. Traditional 510(k)), while novel low-to-moderate-risk devices can use De Novo classification and the highest-risk devices need premarket approval. Studies of a significant-risk device in humans before clearance may need an investigational device exemption; the distinction from the drug pathway is explained in IND vs. IDE, and the submission itself is defined in the dictionary entry for an IDE application. In the European Union, devices fall under the Medical Device Regulation; see EU MDR classification rules and What Is CE Marking?

Two practical issues recur in implant research and in hospital operations alike. First, long-term performance cannot be established in a short trial, so post-market surveillance and registries matter. Second, surgeons often have strong preferences for specific implant brands and instruments, a purchasing topic covered in physician preference items.

How Orthopedic Research Is Funded

In the United States the main federal home for musculoskeletal research is the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), part of the National Institutes of Health. Its stated mission is to support research into the causes, treatment and prevention of arthritis and musculoskeletal and skin diseases, to train basic and clinical scientists to carry out that research, and to disseminate information on research progress. Because musculoskeletal problems also touch aging, child health, imaging and bioengineering, other NIH institutes support related work, so a project may be assigned to an institute other than NIAMS depending on the question.

The usual NIH mechanisms apply:

The R01 research project grant is the standard independent investigator award, and the U01 cooperative agreement is used when the institute expects substantial involvement, as in larger clinical trials and networks.
Early-career investigators, including surgeon-scientists, often move through career development K awards and the K99/R00 Pathway to Independence award.
Applications are scored by peer review in an NIH study section, and funding decisions also depend on institute priorities and payline policy; see NIH paylines for FY2026 for the institute-by-institute picture.
NIH-funded projects must plan how data will be managed and shared; see the NIH data management and sharing plan guide.

Outside NIH, orthopedic research is supported by the U.S. Department of Defense, whose congressionally directed medical research programs have supported orthopaedic and musculoskeletal injury research; by foundations such as the Orthopaedic Research and Education Foundation (OREF); by professional societies; and by device manufacturers, whose industry-sponsored trials and research grants are a large and distinctive funding stream for this field. Industry funding brings conflict-of-interest management duties that research offices need to handle carefully. Check each program’s current announcement for eligibility and scope rather than relying on general descriptions.

A Brief History

1741: Nicolas Andry publishes Orthopedie and coins the term.
1933: The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) is founded at Northwestern University.
1954: The Orthopaedic Research Society (ORS) is formed to advance orthopaedic research.
1960s: Sir John Charnley introduces low-friction total hip arthroplasty in clinical practice, combining a small femoral head, a plastic socket made of ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene, and acrylic bone cement for fixation. It became the model for modern joint replacement and a landmark in the link between engineering and surgery.

The arc since then has been from deformity correction and fracture care toward reconstruction, minimally invasive and arthroscopic technique, computer and robotic assistance, and biologic approaches to cartilage, bone and tendon repair, with increasing weight placed on registries and patient-reported outcomes as evidence.

Career and Training Pathways

In the United States, an orthopedic surgeon completes medical school followed by a five-year accredited residency in orthopaedic surgery, as required under Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education rules, and then typically sits for board certification through the American Board of Orthopaedic Surgery. Many go on to a one-year fellowship in a subspecialty such as sports medicine, spine, hand or adult reconstruction. Training in other countries differs in length and structure.

Research careers take several forms. Surgeon-scientists split time between operating and running a laboratory or clinical research program, often supported by K awards; PhD scientists work in biomechanics, biomaterials, bone and cartilage biology and imaging within orthopedic departments and engineering schools; and clinical research coordinators, biostatisticians and regulatory staff support trials and registries. Many orthopedic departments run dedicated research tracks and research years for residents. Specific programs vary by institution, so confirm details with the program itself.

Societies and Journals

Several organizations shape the field. The ones named below are among the best known, and this is not an exhaustive list:

American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS), the large U.S. professional society for orthopaedic surgeons, known for its annual meeting, education and clinical practice guidelines.
Orthopaedic Research Society (ORS), the scientific society focused on orthopaedic research, bringing together surgeons, engineers and basic scientists.
American Board of Orthopaedic Surgery (ABOS), which certifies U.S. orthopaedic surgeons.
American Society for Bone and Mineral Research (ASBMR) and Osteoarthritis Research Society International (OARSI), which focus on bone biology and on osteoarthritis research respectively.
AO Foundation, EFORT (European Federation of National Associations of Orthopaedics and Traumatology) and SICOT (Societe Internationale de Chirurgie Orthopedique et de Traumatologie), which are international or non-U.S. bodies for education and trauma care.

Well-known journals include the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, the Journal of Orthopaedic Research, Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research and The Bone & Joint Journal. Authorship practices in surgical subspecialties are an integrity topic in their own right; see honorary authorship in surgical subspecialties.

Why Orthopedics Matters for Research Administration

Orthopedic research offices meet a recognizable set of issues. Device studies raise FDA regulatory questions (is an IDE needed, is the study non-significant risk, who is the sponsor) and require device accountability and adverse event reporting. Industry-sponsored trials require contract and budget negotiation, intellectual property terms and conflict-of-interest review, particularly because surgeons commonly consult for or receive royalties from device companies. Surgical trials involve research billing questions about what is routine care and what is research-only, which is easy to get wrong when an implant is part of the intervention. Clinical trial registration and results reporting obligations apply to many orthopedic trials; see clinical trial registration and reporting compliance. Animal and cadaveric work add their own approvals. Long follow-up in registries and cohorts creates data management obligations that outlast a single grant period.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is orthopedics in simple terms?

Orthopedics is the medical and research field concerned with the musculoskeletal system: bones, joints, muscles, ligaments and tendons. It covers injuries, degenerative conditions such as osteoarthritis, deformities and tumors, and uses both surgical and nonoperative treatment.

Is it spelled orthopedics or orthopaedics?

Both are correct. “Orthopaedics” is the traditional British spelling and is used in the formal names of many societies, including the AAOS and the ORS; “orthopedics” is common in American usage. The field is the same.

What does an orthopedic surgeon do?

An orthopedic surgeon diagnoses and treats musculoskeletal conditions, using surgery such as fracture fixation, arthroscopy and joint replacement and also nonoperative care such as bracing, injections and rehabilitation referral. Many also conduct clinical research.

Is orthopedics the same as rheumatology?

No. Rheumatology mainly manages inflammatory and autoimmune joint and connective tissue disease with medication, while orthopedics focuses on structural problems and surgical reconstruction. The two work together on conditions such as arthritis.

Who funds orthopedic research in the US?

The NIH, principally NIAMS but also other institutes, is the main federal funder, supplemented by the Department of Defense, foundations, professional societies and industry sponsors of device and implant studies.

Why is device regulation important in orthopedics?

Implants stay in the body for years, and their failure can require revision surgery. Regulatory pathways, post-market surveillance and registries exist to establish that devices are safe and effective and to detect problems that only appear over time.

How long does it take to become an orthopedic surgeon?

In the U.S., after medical school the residency is five years, with an optional fellowship of about a year in a subspecialty. Board certification follows through the ABOS.