Limb reconstruction surgery in China: an evaluation of its role in the largest developing nation.

China is the "economic tiger" of the twenty-first century. Its new economic policies have overturned the outlook and futures of many industries in this nation, and parallel to this industrial progress have been strides in medicine. However a country steeped in a history of several millennia does not replace generations of experience nor knowledge in a few decades. The author explores the history of limb reconstruction surgery in this country, setting it in context of a population exposed to both traditional Chinese medicine and Western medicine.