The Ortho-Trauma Clinical Research Group was created in 2017 at the Lugano Regional Hospital, conceived as an opportunity of full-time research for a young assistant physician.
The team, under the supervision of Prof. Candrian and Prof. Filardo, has trained over 25 researchers over the years. A scientific secretary and a clinical trial coordinator also joined the team to ensure a 360° approach.
Prof. Christian Candrian (Ortho-Trauma Clinical Research):
Our clinical research is focused on Orthopaedics and Traumatology. We address the main orthopaedic pathologies and the traumatic injuries, taking into account the most frequent pathologies addressed at our institution.
The Service of Orthopaedic and Traumatology is further divided in five smaller teams, which are: Shoulder, Knee, Ankle/Foot, Hand/Wrist and Hip. Each team is composed by senior clinicians and residents, and all the teams are assisted by the Research group, in order to develop and supervise the ongoing clinical trials and help promoting the research lines.
Prof. Matteo Moretti (RMTL):
The regenerative medicine technologies Lab focuses on the development of three-dimensional in vitro substitutes of musculoskeletal tissues such as bone, cartilage and skeletal muscle. These biological replicates can be exploited both as a model for the investigation of pathological mechanisms and drug screening tests and as clinical grafts for the replacement of damaged tissues. We are applying our models to study diseases affecting the bone such as sarcomas and tumor metastases, or whole joint diseases such as osteoarthritis and muscle pathologies such as dystrophies and fibrosis.
Prof. Daniel Schmauss (Department of Plastic, Reconstructive & Aesthetic Surgery):
Our clinical research efforts focus on topics in plastic, reconstructive and aesthetic surgery. In particular, our aim is to assess the safety, efficacy and outcome of different reconstructive procedures, especially after breast cancer surgery, since this is one of our main fields of clinical activity.
The senior clinicians and residents of our department of plastic, reconstructive and aesthetic surgery develop, supervise and conduct the clinical trials at our institution, partially with the support of medical students of the Università della Svizzera Italiana.
Our clinical research efforts focus on topics in plastic, reconstructive and aesthetic surgery. In particular, our aim is to assess the safety, efficacy and outcome of different reconstructive procedures, especially after breast cancer surgery, since this is one of our main fields of clinical activity.
The senior clinicians and residents of our department of plastic, reconstructive and aesthetic surgery develop, supervise and conduct the clinical trials at our institution, partially with the support of medical students of the Università della Svizzera Italiana.
Prof. Christian Candrian (Ortho-Trauma Clinical Research):
The main goal of scientific medical research is to find new and structured evidence to improve everyday clinical practice and to offer better solutions for each patient. In order to accomplish this important task, research must be conducted in a methodologically precise and clear way, involving the different experts addressing the various conditions. Everything begins with the clinical question: starting from an issue raised by clinicians, the first step is to analyse the scientific literature, to understand what is the evidence in the scientific community about that particular topic. If there is no consensus, or if a structured resume of the literature is required, we proceed with a systematic review and meta-analysis, a strong and high-quality work that is able to highlight the main features of interest in that field. Retrospective studies on our patients are also an interesting way to address the results of our interventions.
Finally, taking into account all that we have analysed, we can build clinical study protocols (including high-level randomized controlled trials) that will help both us and the scientific community to improve the clinical knowledge and to better treat our patients.
Prof. Matteo Moretti (RMTL):
To build our models, we exploit biofabrication and microfluidic techniques, aiming at reproducing tissue architecture and function. The models are based on human cells specific for the tissue (including vascular and immune components) embedded in a 3D matrix, mimicking the natural extracellular matrix, and cultured in ad-hoc designed devices. Imaging and quantitative assays are applied to elucidate cell behavior in diseases and/or with drugs.
Prof. Daniel Schmauss (Department of Plastic, Reconstructive & Aesthetic Surgery):
Currently, our department only conducts clinical research at our institution (EOC). Our aim is to address clinical questions that arise in patient care. Our goal is to execute research that is easily translatable in clinics and that has the potential to increase the quality of surgical and non-surgical patient treatments in plastic surgery.
Therefore, we conduct a profound literature research and, in case of insufficient data, we discuss the approach and protocol in our research meetings. The elaborated research plan is sent to the cantonal ethics committee. After approval, we initiate the clinical research projects, that are partially of retrospective and partially of prospective nature. In most cases we try to unify the experience of multiple centres in multicenter approaches. Therefore, our research team has various collaborative projects in Switzerland and abroad.
However, our research group is not only involved in clinical research, but also in basic, experimental research. Since various years, future residents of our department are successfully completing a research fellowship (MD-PhD) in Germany at the Institute for Clinical & Experimental Surgery of the Saarland University, Homburg/Saar, Germany (Prof. Dr. M.W. Laschke) with a highly valuable collaboration on projects on various topics in experimental plastic surgery.
Contacts:
ortopedia.lugano@eoc.ch
+41 (0)91 811 77 17
Ospedale Regionale di Lugano, Sede Italiano
Via Pietro Capelli 1
6962 Viganello