Dr. Craig Della Valle, orthopedic surgeon at Rush University Medical Center, has won the prestigious American Association of Hip and Knee Surgeons Clinical Research Award, which will be presented at the association’s annual meeting in November, in Dallas, Texas.

The award is for Della Valle’s study examining standard care for patients whose total hip replacements have failed because of infection – reported to be as high as three percent of cases. 

Standard care involves removing the device, treating the infection and implanting a new hip two months later.  But physicians have little guidance on how to evaluate whether the infection has been cured and when it is safe to implant another device.  Della Valle, an expert on treating complications of hip arthroplasty, offers evidence-based recommendations to help in that decision-making.

“This award is an acknowledgement of the excellent clinical and scholarly work being done in the Department of Orthopedic Surgery at Rush, which has long been a referral center for complex cases because of the expertise of our clinicians,” said Dr. Joshua Jacobs, chair of the department.  “Dr. Della Valle in particular has developed an international reputation for his expertise in treating patients with infected total joint replacements, engaging in ground-breaking research that has helped to define clinical algorithms for successfully managing these difficult cases.”

Established in 1991, the mission of the American Association of Hip and Knee Surgeons is to provide leadership in advocacy, education and research to achieve excellence in hip and knee patient care. Its membership includes more than 1,200 board-certified or board-eligible orthopedic surgeons in the United States and Canada who devote at least 50 percent of their practice to hip and knee arthroplasty.