Contact
Areas of expertise
Biography
Ville Äärimaa is the head of division of the musculoskeletal system at Turku University Hospital. He is a specialist of surgery and orthopaedics and traumatology, and his clinical work has focused on treating patients with shoulder disorders since 2006. In 2007 he established a clinical quality registry for all patients undergoing shoulder surgery at his clinic. Thereafter his work and research has focused on improving efficacy and effectivess of surgical treatment. He has run several randomized controlled trials with co-workers and helped to develop local, national and international collaboration and registry datasets. Ville Äärimaa's interest has further grown toward value based health care and implementation of clinical research results into clinical practise, to further improve the value of orthopaedics and traumatology.
Teaching
MD, PhD Ville Äärimaa is an adjunct professor (docent) at Turku University. He is a frequently invited speaker on his areas of interest both at his own clinic, in the national orthopedic forum and also in international courses and congresses.
Research
MD, PhD Ville Äärimaa did his thesis on healing of skeletal muscle injury in 2006. Thereafter his research has focused on treatment of shoulder disorders. There are three major chronological groups of shoulder disorders, ie. instability, rotator cuff tear and osteoarthritis/cuff tear arthropathy. Ville Äärimaa's research touches upon eachs of these entities, but focuses especially on rotator cuff related problems. He has run in close collaboration with co-workers world's first randomized controlled effectiveness trial on treatment of non-traumatic rotator cuff tears and is now running a placebo controlled trial on efficacy of surgical repair of traumatic rotator cuff tears. In addition, he has run a trial on surgical treatment of shoulder instability and has studied the outcome and risks related to shoulder arthroplasty. He has helped to develop measurement methods of outcome after shoulder surgery and facilitated international collaboration and merging of uniform datasets. Ville Äärimaa has supervised one thesis work and is currently supervising four doctoral students. He has received various grants from eg. Suomen Lääketieteensäätiö, SECEC and Suomen Akatemia.