Today’s episode is going to focus on ligament reconstruction in skeletally immature patients – including various growth plate sparing ACL reconstruction techniques, MPFL reconstruction considerations and clinical outcomes.

Today’s episode is going to focus on mental performance and burnout — specifically: What is burnout? What are some risk factors for burnout? And how do we prevent and treat burnout in orthopedic surgeons?

Today’s episode is kind of an Overtime / Ask The Sports Docs crossover. One of the PTs that Ashley works closely with asked her why some patients do well after ACL surgery and some don’t fare as well, despite the surgery being identical in terms of technique, graft choice, post-op protocol etc. 

Today, we’re talking about posterior cruciate ligament injuries – specifically, surgical treatment; including reconstruction technique and graft choice. We’ll be reviewing an article published this month in AJSM titled, “Single-Bundle Autografts Outperform Single-Bundle Achilles Allograft in PCL Reconstruction in Terms of Posterior Tibial Translation and Clinical Outcomes, but No Differences Exist Between Double-Bundle Grafts.”

We get lots of questions from our patients and our listeners each week. And they’re great questions, so rather than responding individually we thought we’d do these mini episodes where highlight some of the best questions and our responses, with some literature to back it up.

We get lots of questions from our patients and our listeners each week. And they’re great questions, so rather than responding individually we thought we’d do these mini episodes where highlight some of the best questions and our responses, with some literature to back it up.

Today’s episode is going to focus on management of patellar instability – including nonsurgical treatment, MPFL reconstruction techniques and the addition of other procedures including trochleoplasty and osteotomies.

Today’s episode is going to focus on the workup of a patient with a suspected multiligamentous knee injury as well as a surgical approach that follows – including acute versus delayed surgery, repair versus reconstruction, surgical technique and order of operations in the OR.

Our last poster is titled Outcomes and Return to Sport Following Arthroscopic Bankart Repair for Anterior Shoulder Instability in Contact versus Non-contact Athletes: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.  We’ve spoken a lot about the surgical treatment for anterior shoulder instability on this podcast – most recently with Dr. Brian Lau. 

Our next poster is titled Sleep in Orthopaedic Surgeons: A Prospective Longitudinal Study of the Effect of Home Call on Orthopedic Attending and Resident Sleep. Recurrent episodes of partial sleep deprivation resulting from call schedules are commonly seen in physicians. This has been shown to cause decreased mental effectiveness while at work, which corresponds with a blood alcohol level of 0.08%. 

Our next poster is titled Characterization of Concussions in the National Basketball Association and the 90-day Period Following Return to Play: Analysis of Musculoskeletal Injury Risk and Player Performance. This study was performed at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona and sought to determine the incidence of musculoskeletal injury in the immediate 90-day period following return to play from concussion. 

Our next poster is titled “Mid-term Follow-up of Patellofemoral Osteochondral Allograft Transplantation.” Bugbee was a guest on our show back in November 2023. That is episode 59 and 60, if you want to go check it out! In that episode, we discussed osteochondral allograft transplantation for various cartilage defects of the knee, including medial and lateral tibiofemoral, which are the more common locations for OCA transplantation. This study focuses specifically on outcomes of OCA transplantation for patellofemoral cartilage defects.

While return to play is very important for both players and teams, arguably even more important is return to performance. With advancements in pitch tracking analysis and analytics, it is now possible to determine return to full performance, based on comparison of preop and postop metrics.

Welcome back to The Sports Docs Podcast!  In this episode, we’re going to continue our discussion with Dr. Andrea Spiker and focus on open surgical treatment for hip preservation, then wrap up with a discussion on post-op rehab and return to play.

We chat with Dr. Andrea Spiker about hip preservation - starting with femoroacetabular impingement (FAI). Dr. Spiker is dual fellowship trained in sports medicine and hip preservation. She is the Program Director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Orthopedic Surgery Sports Medicine Fellowship Program. Dr. Spiker has published extensively on the topic of hip preservation and was recently named anAJSM editor for hip, so we’re very excited to share her expertise with you!

On Ask the Sports Docs, we answer some of the most common questions we get from our patients and podcast listeners. Today’s conversation focuses on an area of sports medicine that we get asked a lot, despite us being surgeons: “What nonsurgical treatments can I do to rehab my musculoskeletal injury as well as improve my performance and prevent reinjury?”

We dive into the evidence on the following nonsurgical modalities:
✳️ Kinesiotape
✳️ Sports massage
✳️ Acupuncture

On this Overtime episode, we’re diving into a topic that we haven’t discussed before on this podcast — the medico-legal side of sports medicine. Specifically, the malpractice liability exposure for team physicians.

We review an article from the February 2025 issue of AJSM titled “Malpractice Liability Exposure and the Sports Medicine Team Physician: Caring for Professional Athletes in the National Football League, Major League Baseball, and National Hockey League.”

It is a Reboot Special with one of our faves - Dr. Brian Cole! Today’s episode is going to focus on osteochondral allograft transplantation, and specifically how basic science research can and should impact your clinical practice.

Today we’re talking about pickleball – the fastest growing sport in the United States. From 2019- 2021, the number of pickleball players increased from 3.3 to 4.8 million. The reason for the growth of the sport is likely multifactorial, including that it encompasses a wide variety of age ranges, it is easy to understand and it is inexpensive to play.

Today, we’re talking about graft choice for anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction, and specifically how that impacts psychological readiness to return to play. Now, we’ve spoken extensively about ACL injury on this podcast.