Orthopedic surgery

Surgery to Remove Cartilage in the Knee: Not Effective!

Surgery to remove cartilage in the knee likely happens thousands of time each day. The surgeon pokes in the arthroscope and sees a cartilage flap, a piece of cartilage that is attached at one end and no longer connected to the bone. The doctor then shaves that piece of cartilage off. Why? No particular scientific…read more

Why You Can’t Inject a Torn Knee ACL with Ultrasound

When we first began injecting ACL tears with stem cells many years ago, we tried quite a few techniques. At first, it was a very difficult injection that wasn’t reliable. However, after some anatomy review and testing several methods, we finally settled on a procedure that produced reliable results and then began teaching that through…read more

The Side Effects of Orthopedic Surgery: Doubling Down at the Great Orthopedic Surgery Casino

What are the side effects of orthopedic surgery? One of the more disturbing things we see in interventional orthopedics is patients who have undergone multiple aggressive types of orthopedic surgery. The behavior is a bit like a gambler at a casino. If you don’t hit it big the first time, keep doubling down until you…read more

Poorer Results for Knee Replacements in Younger Patients

We have a problem. We have convinced a generation of younger knee arthritis patients through commercial advertising that a knee replacement will “fix” their knee. However, this isn’t really true. Now another new study shows that while older patients have more severe arthritis than younger knee replacement patients, younger patients report poorer results with the…read more

Hamstrings Surgery Recovery? There Is No Such Thing as the Hamstrings

We all know the hamstrings muscle because, for many people, it’s usually tight. Or perhaps you know it because it’s always getting pulled. Or maybe you or a loved one has torn it and is worried about hamstrings surgery recovery. What if I told you the muscle doesn’t exist in the first place? Every medical…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

Hand Surgery Side Effects That Can Easily Be Avoided…

If you’ve ever wondered why sometimes I seem to be a bit “anti-surgery,” you would only need to spend a day with me in clinic to find out why. We see surgery train wrecks day in and day out. What makes them so upsetting is that most of the time, the surgery could have been…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