Robert B. Salter, MD
1924 - 2010
Robert Salter died in May of 2010, the week following POSNA's annual meeting. It's very daunting to try to summarize the career of a man who was so seminal to our Society, our subspecialty, and all of orthopaedics.
Dr. Salter earned his medical degree at the University of Toronto. After residency, he moved to Britain where he did his research training at the London Hospital with Sir Reginald Watson-Jones, who felt that immobilization for fractures should be rigid, enforced and prolonged. Bob's intuition told him that this dogma was false, much to the ire of his supervisor, and began his career long pursuit of the real truth which culminated in his development of continuous passive motion and subsequent major shifts in the way we treat orthopaedic conditions.
His spirit of inquiry characterized his entire 55-year career at The Hospital For Sick Children. His development of the Salter Innominate Osteotomy for hip dysplasia and his role in the Salter-Harris classification of growth plate injuries made him the best-known Orthopaedic Surgeon in the world. As such, his honors and awards are too numerous for me to even begin to enumerate.
Dr. Salter's last day at Sick Kids was March 30, 2010 when he participated in a teaching seminar. His retirement therefore lasted only about 6 weeks prior to death, a short respite for a man who gave us so much.
