The Denver Post profiles knee surgeon Richard Steadman, MD, of Vail, Colo.-based Steadman Clinic, and speaks to his many accolades in medicine and throughout this life.
Here are five things to know:
1. Following high school, Dr. Steadman played football during his freshman and sophomore year at Texas A&M University in College Station.
2. When practicing in Lake Tahoe, Calif., earlier in his career, Dr. Steadman tried another approach that deviated from the way many surgeons treated knee injuries. At the time, many thought casting a knee following an injury was the best course of action. However, Dr. Steadman said casting prevented healing, so he performed surgery on his patients and then immediately prescribed rehab.
2. As a practicing orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Steadman's career has spanned nearly 40 years and has treated numerous athletes.
Andy Mill, a former alpine ski racer on the U.S. Ski Team, told Denver Post, "He touched my heart. He showed me how to care. When he would walk into an examining room, he would walk in with a fellow doctor who was studying under him and he would just fill every ounce of that room with his presence. He'd smile and say with that Texas drawl, 'What's goin' on?"
3. Dr. Steadman attributes much of his surgical success to his dedicated patients telling the Denver Post, "If I told them to jump off the roof, they would do it. But I learned from them. They would come up with things that went beyond what I had told them they could do. Their athletic intuition was helpful. "
4. Some of Dr. Steadman's many accomplishments include:
● Uncovering that performing microfracture procedures at the end of goes facilities the create of fibrous cartilage that can take the place of damaged articular cartilage
● Devising a "healing response" microfracture techniques that can encourage torn anterior cruciate ligaments to reattach to bone by themselves.