Maggie McKay (Host): This is Memorial Health Radio with Memorial Health System, Ohio. I'm your host, Maggie McKay. When you combine sports medicine and orthopedic care, it's a winning combination. And today we'll find out why with Dr. Mark Plumby, Orthopedic Surgeon Sports Medicine, and Dr. Austin Patterson, Sports Medicine Physician.

Thank you both for joining us.

Mark Plumby, MD: Thanks for having us.

Austin Patterson, DO: Yeah, it's a pleasure being here.

Host: So let's just start with, what role do you serve as part of the sports medicine team? Why did you choose sports medicine?

Mark Plumby, MD: For me, I grew up as an athlete. I played primarily football. That was my main sport and, that took me into college. I played football in college as well as a linebacker, but I had a lot of injuries throughout that time. And, I had an orthopedic surgeon who took really good care of me, and he made me feel special, made me feel important. And when I came to realize at the time of trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life, I knew I loved working with people. I knew I loved sports. So I wanted to really give back to the community in that way that the orthopedic surgeon helped me throughout my injuries in my career.

Host: Did he ever know that you went into this line of work?

Mark Plumby, MD: Oh yeah, we talk frequently. Still open line of communication, really close family friend.

Host: That's nice. How about you, Dr. Patterson?

Austin Patterson, DO: What got me into sports medicine was I grew up kind of admiring my godfather, who's an orthopedic surgeon. I was always kind of at his side when he was on the sidelines at local universities providing care. I really admired the work that he did and really admired the relationships that he was able to develop with people in the community and on the sports teams. So that kind of led me towards a path of wanting to work with athletes and people within the community to get them moving and so I find it very rewarding.

Host: I bet that made him feel good too. What are the most common injuries or conditions you treat? And what ways do sports medicine and orthopedics work together to treat them?

Austin Patterson, DO: So, yeah, the most common injuries that I treat, whether it's acute injuries, is going to be things like ankle sprains, concussions, muscle strains, overuse conditions such as arthritis, golfer's elbow, tennis elbow, and disorders of the rotator cuff as well. The ways that orthopedic and sports medicine providers work together is really, we use our own areas of expertise to provide efficient and comprehensive medical care to our athletes and people within our community so that we can get them back on the field or just living their daily lives more functional and pain-free.

Mark Plumby, MD: I'd have to agree with Dr. Patterson. We have a very open line of communication between the two of us. So we're always treating very similar injuries and referring patients back and forth. And our motto is really to try to do the best we can for the patient as soon as possible.

So that's getting them in quickly, getting a workup quickly, getting a diagnosis quickly so that we can get that patient or the athlete, weekend warrior back to their activity as soon as possible. And as far as the most common injuries that I particularly see as an orthopedic surgeon, primarily knee ligament injuries like A-C-L, M-C-L, cartilage injuries, and then shoulder dislocations, which involve labral tears. And also the common rotator cuff tears as well.

Host: And what's your approach to treating and managing sports recreational related injuries?

Austin Patterson, DO: Yeah, I think, Dr. Plumby mentioned it earlier as far as how we work together. I mean, as a team, we really try to get the athlete or patient back to their desired activities as fast and safely as possible. We primarily do it through a team approach, not only between Dr. Plumby and I as orthopedic and non-operative providers, but also through our physical therapy team, our athletic trainers.

So our team goes much beyond the walls of our clinic or OR in order to get these patients, back to what they want to do.

Host: Why is it important to be seen by a sports medicine or orthopedic professional for an injury?

Mark Plumby, MD: So it's important to see by a sports medicine physician, because we do have a special training, and a lot of tools in the bag to be able to triage the patient or the athlete quickly. You know, we are are trained to diagnose and treat rapidly so that we can ultimately provide that best high level of care.

So that we get the patient or the athlete back to the field as soon as possible. Oftentimes we'll see patients, their workup might be dragged out a little bit because they're not seeing the right person at the right time. So if we get them into our clinic, we know how to get that imaging quickly.

Especially an MRI. Sometimes we can get an MRI within 24-48 hours because we've established that protocol and that work order with the hospital to be able to achieve that goal of getting patients back on the field quickly.

Host: Is sports medicine just for athletes. Can you give an example of how a non-athlete would benefit from the care of a sports medicine team?

Austin Patterson, DO: Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, we both provide services to people of all ages and activity levels. I think the most basic example would be somebody that performs manual labor, just dealing with chronic elbow pain, they may see me in my clinic or Dr. Plumby and I myself might treat them with something like a minimally invasive procedure to get them back to their job and ability to make a means of income.

Host: What are some of the most innovative treatments or technologies currently being used for the treatment of sports related injuries?

Mark Plumby, MD: So that's a loaded question, and it really depends on what joint, what ligament, what tendon, what area of the body you're looking at. For me personally, I'm primarily a shoulder and knee specialist. When it comes to the knee and the ACL, that's one of the most common ligaments injured, there's a technique for ACL reconstruction that was popularized by Dr. Chad Lavender down in Huntington, West Virginia called the fertilized ACL where it involves utilizing the patient's bone marrow to help augment the surgical repair to improve their outcomes, earlier recovery. There's also really cool procedures that I can do in the knee for those patients or athletes who have cartilage defects.

 In a young athlete, we can get a little pothole defect in the cartilage and we now have the ability to take the patient's cells from their cartilage, send them to the lab, regrow them and implant them back into that defect, and that will actually grow the cartilage and then give them basically what they had when they were born, a new functional ACL. So there's a lot of innovation in the field of orthopedic surgery.

Host: Wow.

Austin Patterson, DO: As a non-surgical sports medicine physician, I offer a couple unique procedures as well in my clinic. One being PRP injections, which stands for Platelet Rich Plasma Injections. We draw your blood and essentially what we do is inject it into the area of injury, such as in the case of arthritis or overuse tendon injuries to help your body use its innate healing properties, to improve your condition. Another procedure that we do is a procedure called Tenex. What this procedure does is it uses, ultrasound technology to actually debride tendons, and remove scar tissue in order to get you back to your desired activity, quicker, essentially.

Host: That's amazing as well. Wow. There are a lot of options, thankfully. So how can someone reduce their risk of injury when they're participating in sports related or recreational activities?

Austin Patterson, DO: The most basic thing that you can do is get adequate sleep, seven to eight hours, eat a well-balanced diet, focusing on quality protein sources. And then, as medicine providers, we always stress prehab or a strengthening program to prevent things like acute and overuse injuries.

Now, when you're participating in sports, you can't always prevent injuries, but many times we see a lot of overuse injuries that develop just because there's asymmetries in the body, due to weakness on one side. So that would be probably a really important thing to include, especially for our young athletes.

Another thing is just a gradual increase in activity when you're starting something new. And then load management for kiddos, that are participating in sports, making sure that they're not specializing early on, that they're playing as many sports as they can and also having some type of off season where they're just actively playing, but not particularly, on the baseball field or football field, 40 plus hours a week, so.

Host: I love that, balance.

Mark Plumby, MD: I would agree with all the things that Dr. Patterson said. And in including it's important to develop a stretching program before you participate in those activities. Now, historically, we thought that you needed to do static stretching. That means bend and hold where you're stretching the ligaments and holding them, but we've found that that's not the best way to get your muscles and tendons warmed up for participation. Because there's never a scenario when you're an athlete or recreational athlete, you're going out there and you're stretching and holding during physical activity. It's constant stretch and let go, stretch and go. Rapidly. So that's how you need to warm up, and that technique is called dynamic warmups, where you're stretching and going. So Frankensteiners, butt kicks and gradual buildup with jogging so that you can get the muscles and tendons warmed up as they're going to be used in that level of activity.

Host: How do you get scheduled with a sports medicine or an orthopedic provider?

Austin Patterson, DO: Yeah, I think that it's super easy. You just call the number for our offices. Our schedulers, our staff do a really good job kind of triaging that, make sure you they get in with the right provider. Like we have said in the past, we try to get to patients as quickly as possible so that we can figure out what's wrong and get them back to what they want to do.

Mark Plumby, MD: So it's easy. Just give the office a call. You don't need a referral. Happy to see anybody at any time, so just give us a call. We'd love to see ya.

Host: That's very reassuring. Well, thank you both so much for making the time to share your expertise. This has been very enlightening and educational.

Mark Plumby, MD: Thanks for having us.

Austin Patterson, DO: Yeah. Thank you.

Host: Absolutely. Again, that's Dr. Mark Plumby and Dr. Austin Patterson. To find out more, please visit MHsystem.org/sportsmedicine. And that wraps up this episode of Memorial Health Radio with Memorial Health System. Again, head on over to our website@mhsystem.org for more information and to get connected with one of our providers.

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