Innovative physicians revamp surgical procedures in athletics

By Derek Johannsen

Of The University News

Jordan, Shaq, Faulk, Sosa, and Lemieux are nothing without them.

Every athlete has seen one.

They have revolutionized sports in the last 30 years.

They are doctors.

Athletes today often spend more time with their doctors than they do with their families. Doctors have changed the way that sports are played, by both the greatest of athletes and the youngest of children.

The truth is that thousands of surgeries are performed daily, which enable athletes to continue sports careers that would be crippled without them.

Doctors have developed ways to repair joints and ligaments in ways that were not even dreamed of 30 years ago.

The medical reform began in 1974. Tommy John was pitching for the Los Angeles Dodgers when he was diagnosed with a career-threatening torn ulnar collateral ligament in his pitching elbow.

Prior to 1974, this injury was career-ending. Knowing this, John went to Dr. Frank Jobe and told him to “make up something.”

Jobe didn’t just make up something; he made history. Jobe extracted a tendon from John’s right arm and implanted it into John’s left arm, his pitching arm, by threading the healthy tendon through holes he had drilled into the bone above and below the elbow.

Without Jobe, John would have never pitched another game. After the procedure, John went on to win another 170 games in the major leagues. In the years following, the innovative procedure was appropriately dubbed “Tommy John Surgery.”

Tommy John surgery wasn’t the only procedure to revolutionize sports medicine in the last 30 years.

In terms of breaking down barriers that had previously existed, arthroscopic surgery gave doctors options that were previously impossible.

In terms of history, the first people to experiment with arthroscopy were physicians in the 1930s. At that time, they had limited tools to work with. Instrumentation was poor, the optics were poor, and sometimes the light bulb used for illumination would break off inside the knee, which was obviously a disaster. It remained a relatively underutilized procedure until the late 1970s and early 1980s, when three events occurred independently that brought the concept into practical use.

One was the explosion of interest in sports and fitness around the world. Another was the advent of fiber optics. The third was the invention of new surgical instrumentation.

They all met at the juncture that is arthroscopic surgery. Arthroscopy is the insertion of a miniature tube through which entire surgeries are performed. Now, 98 percent of all knee surgeries are done this way, even ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) injuries.

Similarly, shoulder stabilization and instability issues are two areas where arthroscopy has become commonplace. The procedure has evolved from a tool of assessment that gave insight into the workings of a joint into a specific, highly specialized diagnostic and operative technique.

The procedures that physicians developed in the 1970s have extended the careers of the best-known of professional athletes. Perhaps, more importantly, these new procedures have given children the opportunity to play football in the front yard or catch with their parents.

Just think how often you hear the phrase “career-ending injury” and then think how often a year later that player is on the field again.

If not for innovative physicians many of world’s greatest athletes would be nothing more than armchair quarterbacks.

(Some information for this article came from orthopedics.about.com)