Orthopedic surgery

Should You Get Surgery to “Fix” Hip FAI? A Test of Construct Validity

If you read this blog, you know that I often write about what I experience on a day-to-day basis as a clinician. This weekend a hip surgeon on Linkedin and I went back and forth on the topic of why so many people without pain have FAI on their imaging and whether that means that…read more

How Do We Get Coverage for Orthobiologics? The Problem With Assigning Success Rates to Specific Orthopedic Surgeries

How has Regenexx been able to get more than a thousand US employers to cover interventional orthobiologic (IO) procedures? One of the ways is to perform analyses of how IO procedures can help their employees avoid surgery, save them money, and reduce their time out of work. Today we’ll explore just one little piece of…read more

Why the Idea That an ACL Can Heal Itself Is Surgical Sacrilege

As I have written before, if modern surgical sports medicine has one sacred cow, it’s ACL reconstruction. That’s why the fact that we have dozens of MRI examples of non-healing torn ACLs improving with our Perc-ACLR procedure has raised eyebrows. Now a new study that shows that some ACLs can heal themselves has apparently angered…read more

Can the Fox Guard the Henhouse? Why Putting Surgeons In Charge of Reducing Surgical Rates is a Bad Idea

My mother loved her homespun idioms. One of those was that you could never put the fox in charge of the henhouse. This week a Regenexx corporate salesperson was trying to explain to a corporate client why putting a famous orthopedic clinic in charge of using interventional orthobiologics to reduce surgeries was a bad idea.…read more

Periacetabular Osteotomy: Should You Get Hip PAO Surgery?

You find out after a visit to the local orthopedic surgeon’s office that you or your young adult has hip dysplasia. One of the treatments offered is a surgery called PAO. You frantically search the Internet to figure out what that is and whether it’s a good choice. So today let’s explore hip PAO surgery.…read more

Rebutting Misinformation in Orthopedic Journals: Ittleman and Shapiro

Orthobiologic treatments represent a disruptive technology that I have blogged on dozens of times. Given that many patients who used to get invasive orthopedic surgery are now skipping those procedures and instead using interventional orthobiologics, orthopedic surgeons have varied reactions to this new playing field. We’ll explore those issues today in the context of an…read more

Why Language from a New FDA Amniotic and Umbilical Cord Warning Letter Is a Big Deal

I’ve covered the stem cell wild west for years. One of the crazier things out was amniotic and umbilical cord tissue vendors claiming to sell “stem cell” products that don’t actually contain any live and functional stem cells. In addition, despite an FDA crackdown on these companies, there are still vendors selling this stuff with…read more

If You Get a Knee Replacement in Your 40s or 50s How Long Will It Last?

We have been performing a grand experiment since the 1970s called modern orthopedic surgery. The idea is that by surgically intervening, we can fix musculoskeletal problems. While a reasonable idea, one side effect was that younger and younger people began to get operated. This trend combined with heavier and less active humans to have the…read more