“When I was younger, in high school, I had had some orthopedic surgery on my hand, and I met a very interesting orthopedic surgeon, and I decided to kind of follow in his footsteps and become an orthopedic surgeon.”

“I enjoy listening to my patients, talking to them, trying to figure out what exactly gets them going, and what they want to get back to. So, I do spend a lot of time talking with them and learning about their personal habits and what they like to do and try to get them back to that.”

“Generally, we do shoulder Replacements uh because of arthritis in the shoulder. And so there are a lot of different causes of arthritis um and a lot of different symptoms of arthritis many people have. Pain at night, pain with motion – a lot of people have dysfunction where they can’t get to the same range of motion they once had – or pain trying to lift objects. And if they fail non-operative treatment options, then often times we’ll go and consider a shoulder replacement if it’s indicated.”

“Generally, it starts with pain. Uh most importantly that’s what usually brings people to see me. The most um usually if they have pain that doesn’t uh improve with anti-inflammatories or rest or even Physical Therapy, a lot of times they’ll end up seeing me in clinic. Loss of range of motion is another big effect. If they can no longer put on their jacket or reach behind their back, often times that will drive them to come see me. And if I can figure out why they can’t get their arm where they used to be able to.”

“Yeah, there’s generally two different types of shoulder replacement surgeries. There’s a surgery called the anatomic total shoulder replacement. That’s where we replace the ball with a metal ball and the socket with a plastic socket. There’s also the reverse total shoulder replacement. That’s where we actually reverse the joint. So, the ball gets replaced with a socket and the socket get replaced with a ball, and that’s really more of a mechanical adjustment that the surgeon makes. It doesn’t change the outcome for the patient at all. It just depends on whether or not the patient has a good functioning rotator cuff. That helps determine whether or not we should use the anatomic or the reverse shoulder replacement.”

“The recovery is the same for my patients whether they have an anatomic or reverse total shoulder replacement. People are usually pretty surprised at how quick the recovery can be um because they generally get a shoulder replacement when they are having significant loss of range of motion and pain. Generally, they’re not much more limited after surgery. I usually put them in a sling after surgery, but they can use their hand right away for light duty activities um immediately after surgery. The total recovery time is about 3 months before they’re back doing almost all of their normal activities of daily living.”

“Generally, these surgeries are outpatient surgeries, so they’re uh done in the morning and usually most patients are home before dinner time at night. As of this year we’re able to do these surgeries at our surgery center. Previously, they were only allowed in hospitals, but with a change in Medicare rules, we can do them here at the surgery center. So, I prefer to do them here at our Surgery Center. Some patients do need a hospital stay. They might need to stay overnight, or they might have more complex medical issues. Oftentimes we’ll do those uh in the hospital setting. I often do those at Mercy Hospital in Oshkosh, but I would say 95% of my patients have their shoulder replaced here at OSMS Surgery Center.”