The ON/AVN Support Group
Int'l Association, Inc.
Research Project
This is not only very exciting news, this is extraordinary news. For the first time
ever, ON/AVN patients have banded together and asked a hospital,"Would you  
please help us by performing a research project aimed at understanding  the
causes of ON/AVN, and trying to devise a better cure?"

The answer, without hesitation, was "Yes, we will help."

The Hospital for Special Surgery, Manhattan, NY, was founded in 1863 as the
first orthopedic hospital in the United States caring for the musculoskeletal
problems of veterans of the Civil War and poor and homeless children.  HSS is
affiliated with the New York – Presbyterian Hospital and the Weill Medical College
of Cornell University.  

HSS is very special to many of us in this Association. I am one of those people in
our group who was fortunate enough to be able to go there for all of my joint
replacement surgeries and was very impressed each time by their consistently
high levels of care, knowledge, and professionalism. Honestly, I cannot praise HSS
or my surgeon there enough. On the cutting edge of everything orthopedic, HSS
seemed to me to be the logical choice to ask for help with a project of this
importance. I was not disappointed; I expected no less.

Our project will focus on two main areas. One area will focus on steroids and their
relationship to ON/AVN. We need to know why these wonder drugs lead to AVN for
so many people.  We need to find a way to halt this reaction and to reverse it
somehow. The second area of focus will be on bone regrowth for AVN patients.
With the new technologies already available today, precious little research has
been done which targets bone regrowth for bones riddled with AVN, bones that
actually die. It is essential that we find a way to encourage new bone growth for
AVN patients; there are only so many times in a person's life that any joint may be
replaced. After that limit is reached, what choices, if any, will be available to us?
Additionally, younger patients are often told they must wait until they are much
older for a replacement.

If ever a group of people needed help, AVN patients must surely be at the top of
that list. Nothing can be worse than being in indescribable pain and unable to walk
and then being told, "We don't know how to treat you." Or, "We can treat you, but
you have to wait twenty or thirty years."  We desperately need to turn this around,
and we need to do it now. Too many lives are being totally disrupted by this painful
and debilitating disease. Just look at the numbers! The
NONF reports that there
are at least a quarter of a million documented AVN sufferers today in the USA
alone today, but that the actual  number is probably much higher. Our members
come from all over the world, and the numbers seem to be increasing over all each
and every year.

We cried out and someone heard our voices. Now, if we can raise the start-up
fees, we can get this project underway. This is a monumental task for people who
can barely walk, or not walk at all, and/or who have lost their ability to work and
provide for their families. But, we have a saying in our group:

    " If we don't do this, who will? "

We believe in ourselves and in each other and we believe that with some new
research, answers will be found. Please help us to raise the money for this project.
Our goal is to collect $170,000 so that we can begin. Please help us. You never
know: it just might be
you or one of your loved ones who may have to join our
Association some day. We know you would want and expect answers to your
problem, and by this research project we would hope to be able to give you, and
everyone who suffers from this disease, some real hope.

To learn how to make a charitable contribution to our cause, please visit our
Donations page.

Thank you from all of us...


For more info, please write to:  
avninfo@avnsupport.org
Hospital for Special
Surgery  
click here
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