Presentation of the research groups at HUS Musculoskeletal and Plastic Surgery - Helsinki University Hospital / HU
Research field - Bone substitutes and bone regeneration. Hand surgery.
Director of Division of Teaching and Research, HUS Musculoskeletal and Plastic Surgery, Helsinki University Hospital
Clinical Instructor, Helsinki University
Doc, MD, MSc(Tech)
Specialist in hand surgery, orthopaedic and traumatology
Nina Lindfors has studied medicine at Turku University (graduated in 1992) and chemical engineering at the Åbo Akademi University (graduated in 1995). She has a PhD from Helsinki University on bioactive glass. She is specialized in orthopedic and traumatology and hand surgery and works as a physician in hand surgery at the Helsinki University Hospital (HUS). Currently she is Director of teaching and research at HUS Musculoskeletal- and Plastic Surgery and a clinical instructor at Helsinki University (HU) teaching medical students in orthopedic and traumatology, and hand surgery.
Her research group is focused on bioactive glass, bone regeneration and infection treatment involving both pre-clinical and clinical studies. The long-term goal is to develop bioactive glass composites with increased bone stimulation, as well as to increase the understanding of bone formation. The research group has active ongoing research collaboration with the Faculty of Science and Engineering at the Åbo Akademi University in Finland, as well as international research collaboration with the Maastricht University Medical Centre and Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. Research group: Robert Björkenheim MD, Gustav Strömberg MD, Jukka Pajarinen Doc, MD, PhD, Elin Eriksson Med Stud.
Nina Lindfors has ongoing reseach in the field of hand surgery in several joint research groups, as well as collaboration projects with HU - Department of Physics and with Aalto University.
Professor Ortopaedic and Traumatology
Finnish Centre for Evidence-Based Orthopedics
FACADE is prospective, randomised non-inferiority trial comparing traditional overnight hospital surveillance to discharge on the day of the surgery in patients who have undergone anterior cervical decompression and fusion.
FIDELITY is a randomized, placebo-surgery controlled trial comparing arthroscopic partial meniscectomy with diagnostic arthroscopy, a placebo surgical comparator, in patients with degenerative meniscus tear.
FIMAGE is a study on the prevalence of abnormal imaging findings of the shoulder and their concordance to symptoms in the general population.
FIMPACT is a randomized, placebo-surgery controlled trial comparing subacromial decompression surgery against diagnostic arthroscopy, a placebo surgical comparator, in patients with shoulder impingement.
FINTERCEPT project focuses on the secondary prevention of intimate partner violence.
FIRST trial is a randomized, multinational trial evaluating the efficacy of surgical treatment in patients diagnosed with femoroacetabular impingement (FAI).
FISCAL is a FICEBO-led international collaborative initiative to enhance the generation of trustworthy scientific information, and consequently, to produce improved and more sustainable healthcare.
FISH is a randomized controlled trial comparing surgical treatment with plate fixation and non-surgical treatment with functional bracing in patients with humeral shaft fracture.
Jorma Ryhänen, MD, PhD, docent is a group leader of the FRACTAID project and Head of Hand Surgery, HUS.
FRACTAID study group consist the experts of HUS-Dataservice AI group, Experts of AI and Deep learning as well as several clinical researchers, experts and scientific advisors
FractAid project aims to help to the pressed on-call doctors struggling with musculoskeletal x-ray image interpretation
Trauma imaging studies are challenging to interpret and misdiagnosis causes patient harm.
The past decades advances in computer sciences have made possible to develop artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to analyze medical images. In FractAid project we develop AI models based on convolutional neural networks (CNN) and our clinical data that are able to detect fractures, analyze fracture morphology and displacement.
Our first project is the distal radius fracture detection; because it is the most common fracture of the human body and a common cause for patient injury claims. We are expanding the project to cover all the fractures of human body, but we start with the upper body fractures and bone tumors.
Our team works in close collaboration with HUS-Dataservive AI team to gain the relevant imaging studies and practical software for image annotations. Collaboration with AI companies and research groups provides us with further insight for the optimal AI models and strategy. FractAid is part of CleverHealth Network and Spark Finland.
Some members of the FRACTAID team; Turkka Anttila (PhD student), Arno Butzow (PhD student, Scaphoid fractures), Jorma Ryhänen and Eero Waris (MD, PhD, docent)
PI, Docent, MD, PhD, plastic surgeon
Virve, a plastic surgeon and Merkel cell carcinoma research old-timer, actively cares for clinical patients and treats skin cancer patients at the Helsinki University Hospital. In total, she has published over 120 peer-reviewed articles, and claims more than 1200 citations to her work. Amongst her publications, more than 40 focus on Merkel cell carcinoma. In addition, she has supervised three post-graduate theses on Merkel cell carcinoma. As our clinical expert, she always places the patient first. Currently, she serves as one of four PIs in the RaCaRe Group.
In her spare time, she enjoys reading locked-room mysteries and baking, and analyses folklore myths applying scientific methods.
Adjunct professor M.D., Ph.D. Specialist in Orthopaedics and Traumatology
The multidisciplinary research group working on severe trauma under the name of “Severely Injured Trauma Patient” is chaired by docent Lauri Handolin, MD PhD. The main focus of the research is benchmarking the Helsinki University Hospital Trauma Unit’s outcome in caring severely injured trauma patients and continuous assessment of given care regarding the quality control and used resources. The work is widely based on the Helsinki University Hospital Trauma Unit’s trauma registry including all the severely injured trauma patients cared in the unit. The latest evolvement is assessing the long term outcome and quality of live after severe trauma. The group has close co-operation with the German Trauma Registry (TR-DGU, Trauma Register - Deutschen Gesellschaft für Unfallchirurgie) providing the window for European collaboration and benchmarking. Research group: Lauri Handolin Assoc prof, Tim Söderlund Assoc prof, PhD, Tuomas Brinck MD, Mikko Heinänen MD.
Eero Waris, MD, PhD, docent is a hand surgeon and researcher. His clinical interests are distal upper extremity traumas, peripheral nerve surgery, hand and wrist arthroplasties, and reconstructive upper extremity surgery especially related to tetraplegic patients. His main research focus has been on pathomechanisms of degenerative musculoskeletal disorders, arthroplasties and development of new surgical techniques. Most recent research topics are cone beam computed tomography and automatic image analysis using mathematical modeling and machine learning.
Doc, plastic surgeon
Our groups research projects focus on development of individualized and virtual treatment planning techniques as well as on use of novel CAD-CAM techniques in facial surgery. We also study and evaluate surgical outcome of patients treated in Cleft Palate and Craniofacial Centre, especially cranio-facial surgery.
Tuija Ylä-Kotola is a Consultant in the Plastic surgery department at Helsinki University Hospital. Her main clinical interests are surgical treatment of facial paralysis and reconstructive surgery in head and neck cancers, skin cancers and breast cancer. She completed the PhD study “ Microneurovascular free muscle transfer with cross-over nerve grafts in facial reanimation “ in 2008 at Helsinki University. She worked as a clinical fellow in reconstructive microsurgery at University of Toronto in Canada 2009-2010, and in addition to clinical work could work together with the international research team.
The surgical treatment of facial paralysis requires surgical techniques used in plastic surgery including static repairs, nerve grafts as well as dynamic microneurovascular muscle transfers. Our research team focuses on the results of the surgical treatment, improvement of the current techniques and the quality of life in facial paralysis. We have recently translated the FaCE-scale in Finnish, and validation of the questionaire is going on.
Our research team is working together with a research team in Tampere University and Tampere Technical University focusing on new methods in grading the severity of facial paralysis. We are also studying the effect of muscle stimulation in rehabilitation process in facial paralysis patients.
Docent, PhD Sinikka Suominen and Tiia Pihlamaa MD, PhD are working together with Tuija Ylä-Kotola in this team.