Modern advances in surgical techniques and instrumentation have allowed for successful and safe orthopedic surgical procedures for alleviating pain. Adult orthopedic surgery is a vast surgical specialty spanning seven major subspecialties: adult reconstruction, foot and ankle surgery, hand surgery, shoulder and elbow surgery, spine surgery, sport medicine, and orthopedic trauma. While complications are generally rare following orthopedic surgery, careful patient selection and surgical execution are necessary for optimizing patient outcome.