Many changes have occurred in recent years to produce an increase in the amount of orthopaedic informationтАФinformation which residents will ultimately see in their conferences, on their in-training examination, and during their boards. Today's residents can access this information from a myriad of sources: the AAOS, the Internet, orthopaedic journals, review books, and texts. These resources can include summary statements, questions, annotated references, surgical techniques, or web links, but it is rare to find all of these in one source. Residents and practicing surgeons have less time to read through pages of text and even less time to review multiple sources to ascertain the important concepts for study. The increase in orthopaedic information has led residents to supplement current review texts with their own notes. This text was created from this need to efficiently and effectively gather, review, and retain this mass of information. In an effort to access the key orthopaedic concepts and to better prepare today's busy residents to score well on the Orthopaedic In-Training Examination (OITE) and the Orthopaedic Boards and for the busy practicing orthopaedic surgeon to pass the Re-certification Examination, the Orthopaedic Key Review Concept (OKRC) was founded.

In order to tailor the OKRC to today's residents and practicing physicians, residents training within the University of Pennsylvania Orthopaedic Residency Program were the primary authors on each chapter. Multiple references were used in an effort to create a timely, well-rounded, and thorough text including AAOS resources, previous in-training examinations, leading textbooks, and landmark journal publications. Each chapter presents the review material in a format that the residents felt focuses on the important concepts. Thus, the concepts were summarized and presented in a glossary-like format to explain only the important facts of each review concept. We avoided trying to present all possible information in orthopaedics in the text, but rather select only the important and testable concepts. Extraneous facts that were unlikely to be tested on a formal examination or asked of a resident during routine clinical practice were omitted or succinctly summarized. The material in this text provides answers to previous in-training examinations and review questions. The resident can therefore be assured that the text is up-to-date with the material from which the in-training and Board examinations are being developed.

The material in each chapter has been integrated into reasonable thought-lines thus making it intuitive in terms of finding certain topics. For example, we do not have a separate anatomy chapter but rather have placed the relevant anatomy at the beginning of each subspecialty chapter. We also separated statistics into its own chapter so we could cover this important topic in depth. The business chapter was also separated for the same reasons and we placed more pertinent information for the resident who is about to go into practice. The chapter on how to prepare for the OITE, boards, and re-certification examination contains valuable insights and statistics on success rates for the different examinations. To engender further confidence in this text, we received the approval of many of the leading orthopaedic surgeons in their respective subspecialties. Finally, we felt it was important to have the support of a major and respected publisher. We were fortunate to have Lippincott Williams & Wilkins overwhelmingly support the premise and format of this review and to lend their expertise and resources to ensure the highest quality of the final text.

In the end, the residents have written their own review book with the support of experts in their respective fields. This first edition is a testament to their need for a fresh review textbook and will form the foundation from which future editions will be written by subsequent groups of residents.