An orthopaedic traumatologist is a specialist who is trained in treating wounds and injuries caused by accidents or violence. Traumatology is a fairly new specialty, one that can help reduce the number of complications in patients who have more than one traumatic injury or wound.
All of the orthopaedic traumatologists at UR Medicine completed fellowships at major university hospitals to learn to treat patients with multiple injuries. This sets the traumatologist apart from other orthopaedic surgeons: He or she can determine the best way to treat a number of injuries at the same time, even when the treatment for one may conflict with the treatment for another.
Why is this important? When a patient has a number of injuries, there's a higher risk of complications like blood clots, internal bleeding, and a number of other issues that can be life threatening. The ability to see and understand the patient's entire health condition at once allows the surgeon to take the right precautions, and to choose which part of the body to treat first without endangering the patient.
