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Jaimo Ahn

  • Department of Orthopaedics
    Professor
Head shot of Jaimo Ahn

Overview

Dr. Ahn is a surgeon who specializes in caring for those who have sustained orthopaedic trauma and those in need of fracture-related care.

He was born in Seoul, Korea, and grew up in Chicago, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area. His higher educational tour began at Stanford University followed by a research year at the University of California, San Francisco, and a move across the country to Philadelphia to the University of Pennsylvania, where he completed his MD PhD, Post-Doctoral Fellowship and Residency. He then rounded out his education with a Fellowship in orthopaedic traumatology at Hospital for Special Surgery / Cornell University, an AO Fellowship in orthopaedic trauma and hip surgery at Inselspital (Bern, Switzerland), and finally, an AOA Traveling Fellowship through Western Canada and the US. After almost 25 years at Penn, he joined Michigan Orthopaedics where we was Gehring Research Professor, Chief of Orthopaedic Trauma, Associate Chair for Education and Faculty Development and a member of the Academy of Medical Education, Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation and the (NIH P30) Integrative Musculoskeletal Health Center.

When not caring for patients, he has helped lead his field and musculoskeletal health in the US and internationally through foundations such as the US Bone and Joint Initiative, Foundation for Orthopaedic Trauma and AO Foundation, academic publications such as NEJM, JAMA, and Cochrane Collaborative and professional organization such as the Orthopaedic Trauma Association, Association of Bone and Joint Surgeons and American Physician Scientists Association, and governmental agencies such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (DoD). He is especially proud of his international service through Orthopaedics Overseas (Nicaragua), BUP (Botswana), Mada Foundation / Sign International (Madagascar), HSS Global (Ghana) and his teaching-mentoring service to thousands of students, residents, fellows, and young faculty all over the world.

Clinically, Dr. Ahns mission is to provide the best skeletal trauma/fracture care possiblewhile being compassionate, experienced & evidence-based, patient & family orientedto every one of his patients. He has applied these principles to care for those injured locally and regionally and those from South America, Asia, Europe, and Africa who have sought his care. His expertise includes complex extremity & periarticular (around the joint) fractures, pelvic & acetabular (hip socket) fractures, nonunions (not healing), malunions (healed crooked), and osteomyelitis (bone infections).

His research has been diverse with a few representative papers over the years are below.
1. Trauma/fracture outcomes, including clinical trials
Fracture fixation in the operative management of hip fractures (FAITH). Lancet, 389:1519-1527. 2017.
Fractures in Elderly Americans Associated With Walking Leashed Dogs. JAMA Surgery, 154:458-459. 2019
Total Hip Arthroplasty or Hemiarthroplasty for Hip Fracture. NEJM, 381:2199-2208. 2019.
Simple Surgical Mask Modification for Increased Respiratory Protection during SARS-CoV-2. PLoS ONE, 17:e0272834. 2022.
Real-Time Identification of Life-Threatening Necrotizing Soft-Tissue Infections Using Indocyanine Green Fluorescence Imaging. In preparation,
2024.
2. Surgical/medical decision-making
Crowd Intelligence for the Classification of Fractures and Beyond. PLoS One, 6:e27620. 2011.
Shared Decision Making, Fast and Slow. JAAOS, 24:495-502. 2016.
Defining the Key Parts of a Procedure. JAAOS, 26:142-147. 2018.
Predicting Life Expectancy Following Geriatric Hip Fracture. PLoS One, 16:e0261279. 2021.
Unipolar Hemiarthroplasty, Bipolar Hemiarthroplasty, or Total Hip Arthroplasty for Hip Fracture in Older Individuals. Journal of Bone and Joint
Surgery, 106:120-128. 2024.
3. Surgical/biomedical education
Factors affecting Interest in Orthopaedics Among Female Medical Students: A Prospective Analysis. Orthopaedics, 34:919-932. 2011.
Reinvigorating the Physician-Scientist Pipeline. JCI, 125:883-887. 2015.
Leading From the Front: An Approach to Increasing Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Surgical Training Programs. Annals of Surgery, 269:1012-1015.
2019.
Motivations and impact of international rotations in low- and middle-income countries for orthopaedic surgery residents: Are we on the same
page? American Journal of Surgery, 221(2):245-253. 2020.
Effect of Cognitive Task Simulation in Transfer of Performance Skills in an AO Practical Skills Lab). In press, JOT, 2024
4. Literature synthesis / evidence-based medicine
Randomized-Controlled Trials for Geriatric Hip Fractures are Rare and Underpowered. JBJS, 101:e132. 2019.
Lower Extremity Fracture Management in Chronic Spinal Cord Injury: 2020 Delphi Consensus Recommendations. In press (JBJS Open Access),
2022.
WikiGuidelines for the Management of Pyogenic Osteomyelitis in Adults. Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Network Open,
5:e2211321. 2022
DXA Screening for Transgender and Gender Diverse Patients: An Overview of Current Guidance and Call for Improved Protocols. Academic
Radiology, epub Nov 15, 2023.
Principles for management of hip fracture for older adults taking direct oral anticoagulants: an international consensus statement. Anaesthesia
epub Feb 6, 2024.
5. Molecular regulation of bone healing and re/generation
R-spondin-2 is an osteoblast-produced Wnt agonist that regulates osteoblastogenesis. Bone Research (Nature Press), 6:24. 2018.
Bone marrow adipogenic lineage precursor (MALP) cells regulate osteoclastogenesis during bone remodeling and pathologic bone loss. JCI,
November 18, 2020.
Targeting cartilage EGFR pathway for osteoarthritis treatment. Science TM, January 13, 2021.
Activin A marks a novel progenitor cell population during fracture healing and reveals a therapeutic strategy. eLife, 10:e89822. 2023.
A Murine Delayed-Healing Model Associates Immune Response with Functional Bone Regeneration after Trauma. Preprint bioRxiv v1 deposit on
Oct 31, 2023.

Research

Publications

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