AO Surgery Reference

In a world where everything is literally at your fingertips the AO foundation has now even made orthopaedics, from diagnosis through to the operating table accessible in the same way.

The AO foundation is an online non-profit surgical library consisting of more than 7000 pages.  It includes :

• Hundreds of surgical procedures and approaches described in text and images
• Surgical decision making made easy with literature evaluated and prepared for quick reference
• Access to AO course videos
• Access to hundreds of pages of previously published AO material

It even has links to different regions of the world i.e. Asia Pacific, Latin America, North America, and Middle Europe where you have access to recent events and courses that are offered in those regions.

The authors include 63 renowned surgeons from 22 different countries and the website has even embarked on a translation project which has recently published a malleolar module in Chinese and Spanish.

The site is organised in a manner that it is extremely user friendly, moving from a generalised location e.g. the hand, to the specific required anatomic region.

The beauty of this website is that you can click on the required structure you need –  for example maleoli and it will open up to a window with a range of related problems, each with links to diagnosis, indication, preparation, approach, reduction and fixation and even aftercare.

Once you enter the desired link, the information provided is detailed yet succinct with appropriate diagrams to guide the reader through.

Once you enter the desired link, the information provided is detailed yet succinct with appropriate diagrams to guide the reader through. The AO foundation truly have outdone themselves with such an informative online library, it is almost criminal if medical professionals around the world do not know about them.