THE HARRIS ORTHOPAEDIC LABORATORY @ The Mass General

The early endeavors of the Harris Orthopaedic Lab contributed significantly to widely diverse aspects such as the first human limb replantation, osteoporosis, the cause of osteoarthritis of the hip, and the environment of human articular cartilage. Subsequent years were focused on improving total hip replacement surgery, reducing its most common and devastating problems. These ranged from fatal pulmonary emboli thru poor implant design to solutions for arthritis from total developmental dislocation, and finally to unraveling the mysteries of and ultimately to the elimination of a strange and dreaded, world wide disease which destroyed the bone around total hip replacements in a million patients. Results: His works have contributed to extensive improvement in musculoskeletal disease including to the the reduction in every major complication of total hip surgery by an order of magnitude.