Rate My Professor Alastair Rothwell

Emeritus Professor Alastair Rothwell, ChM (Otago), FRACS, qualified as an orthopaedic surgeon in 1973 and has made significant contributions to orthopaedic surgery at the University of Otago's Christchurch campus within the Faculty of Medicine. Affiliated with the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and Musculoskeletal Medicine (Christchurch), he previously served as Head of Department and continues to oversee the internationally recognised New Zealand Joint Registry, which he established. Rothwell developed expertise in surgery for rheumatoid arthritis and hand and upper limb disorders, with particular focus on surgical restoration of upper limb and hand function for tetraplegic patients, gaining international recognition. He has been a Visiting Professor and guest speaker at numerous national and international conferences and taught medical students for 50 consecutive years, earning the Gold Medal for Excellence in Teaching from the Christchurch campus in 2009. His honours include the Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit (ONZM) in 2006 for services to orthopaedic surgery and the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons' Colin McRae Medal in 2015 for exceptional contributions to surgery.

Rothwell's research interests include the New Zealand Joint Registry, rheumatoid arthritis, and upper limb surgery for tetraplegics. He co-founded a programme to restore upper limb function in tetraplegic patients. Key publications from his body of work, comprising 47 publications cited over 2,491 times, include analyses utilising New Zealand Joint Registry data. Notable papers are "Rates of Joint Replacement Surgery in New Zealand, 1999-2015" published in the Journal of Rheumatology in 2017; "Survival outcomes of cemented compared to uncemented stems in primary total hip joint replacement" in World Journal of Orthopedics in 2014; "An analysis of the Oxford hip and knee scores and their relationship to early joint revision in the New Zealand Joint Registry" in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (British Volume) in 2010; "Rehabilitation after total joint replacement: a scoping study" in Disability and Rehabilitation in 2018; and "Use of Patient-Reported Outcomes in the Context of Different Levels of Data Quality" in Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research in 2011. These publications highlight his impact on joint replacement outcomes and patient-reported measures in the field of orthopaedic surgery.