Spondylolysis Recovery Time: Avoiding the Knife

Spondylolysis is common in disturbingly young athletes who are born with weakened or disconnected areas of their spine. Sometimes this break in the spine bone heals, and sometimes it doesn’t. When the spot doesn’t mend, the patient usually undergoes a big surgery that can cause serious problems. So if your spondylolysis recovery time is taking too…read more

LASER Spine Surgery Side Effects: Meet the Thoracodorsal Fascia

Have you seen those new compression garments athletes wear to try to improve performance? The idea is that by adding compression to the muscles, the ultratight shirts and pants will make the muscles contract better. This concept has been around for a while; it’s called fascia. Every muscle in your body is already surrounded by fascia that…read more

New Research: An MRI with Stenosis Doesn’t Diagnose Your Pain

We have all been taught that what shows up on an MRI is incredibly important—so much so that countless invasive surgeries are launched based on a picture and a cursory exam. Despite this, study after study continues to show just how bad MRI is at predicting who’s in pain. However, one of the sacred cows…read more

What Percentage is “Useless Orthopedic Surgery” Based on Research?

This is a post that some orthopedic surgeons will hate but that needs to be written. This week, I decided to try and estimate the number of orthopedic surgeries that were still being done despite research showing they didn’t work. When I was done, I realized that a staggering 53% of orthopedic surgeries being performed…read more

We Publish a Low Back Stem Cell Research Paper

Despite being the first clinic in the world to inject stem cells into low back discs, we’ve had a piece missing in our research portfolio. We’ve published on knees, hips, shoulders, and other joints, and while we’ve included low back disc cases in our complications papers, we’ve held back on publishing a paper on efficacy.…read more

Listening to the Body on Exam: An Old Car Crash Upper Back Injury Speaks…

One of the most famous physicians of all time is Sir William Osler, the father of the modern residency program that uses real-world clinical experiences to train young doctors. One of his most famous sayings was, “Listen to your patient; he is telling you the diagnosis.” I’ve heard that same mantra paraphrased through the years…read more

Stem Cell Disc Injection: The Hammer and the Nail

There’s a saying in medicine, “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”. Meaning that if all the doctor knows how to do for a given problem is one treatment, then he or she tends to use that treatment when it’s not appropriate. This morning I’d like to highlight a stem…read more

Back Pain a Predictor of Poor Knee Replacement Outcomes

One of the hardest things for the modern orthopedic surgeon to do is to look outside of the joint that he or she is treating to another area that may be involved in the pathology. As an example, to see how a back problem can lead to knee or hip arthritis. To some degree this…read more