In current issue of "Progress in Medicine” we included a commemoration of professor Adam Gruca, one of the 20th century's most famous orthopaedic surgeons.

His student and author of the commemoration, professor Stefan Malawski, is an established authority among orthopaedic surgeons in Poland and abroad.

The majority of topics in the current issue of "Progress in Medicine”, was also the subject of clinical and scientific activity of professor Jan Orłowski, the first and many years' Head of the Department of Orthopaedics and Traumatology the Medical Centre of Postgraduate Education, Warsaw, Otwock. Professor retired at the end of September 2006, unfortunately two years later, 09.19.2008, our, as we called him, Professor passed away. His experience, kindness and modesty had a great influence on the development of the Department. Professor had an exquisite trauma intuition, he devoted his professional life to improvement of ostheosynthesis and treatment of the knee joint trauma. His idea was to treat the fractures in a way which would be least invasive and at the same time stable enough to allow early mobilization after the surgery. These conditions are fulfilled by intramedullary nailing, the method first used to treat femur fractures by professor Küntscher. The German surgeon also blocked the nail for the first time. The idea of intramedullary nailing blocking was later popularized by German orthopaedic surgeons, professor Gross and Kempf. At the moment it is the most popular method of ostheosynthesis of the long bones, especially femur, tibia and humerus. It is used for fracture treatment, as well as for treatment of delayed union and non-union. It is well recognized method of multilevel and multilocal fracture treatment.

Six of eight articles concern the method of intramedullary nailing.

The article "Floating knee” – ipsilateral fractures of femur and tibia additionally introduces a very difficult medical problem – the floating knee.

The article "Results of Leeds-Keio prosthesis application in the treatment of anterior knee instability” presents the usage of polyester endoprosthesis in the treatment of ACL lesion. It is used to be a very popular method of knee instability treatment. Nowadays we are witnessing a decreasing level of application of this kind of prosthesis due to development of other methods.

The polyester endoprosthesis was in the centre of interest for professor Orłowski. His interest in this field had a huge scientific and clinical impact. It became the topic of his habilitatus dissertation and many patients benefited from this treatment.

The article "Platelet rich plasma, as new and promising agent in the orthopedic surgery – an introduction” addresses the usage of PDGF in the delayed and non union treatment. The main purpose of this article is to present a general overview of this new method.