06/07/2013    

RESPONSES / COMMENTS (NEWS STORIES)- PART 1

RE: CA Podiatrist Uses Minimal Incision with Fixation for Bunion Repair

From: Randall Brower, DPM

Here we are again with minimal incision bunion surgery in the news. I shake my head. So how does Dr. Khosroabadi, through a 5 mm incision check for metatarsal head cartilage defects, sesamoids groove chondral defects, joint capsule thickening, true PASA (inspection of real effective cartilage, dorsal bony hypertrophy, joint mice, etc?), no less one K-wire fixation in this litigious world?

Just because you can do something through a small hole, should you do it? What a huge disservice this is to the patient and to our profession. Yet another thing to keep orthopedists shaking their heads. Stop the salesmanship, stop boutique podiatry, and do right by your patient, and quit trying to sell them on surgery.

Walk on a bunion and one K-wire at three days. Do you see the large bone callus that forms when you do that? Talk about severe sesamoid dysfunction post-op. I thought that generation was retiring...no offense.

Randall Brower, DPM, Avondale, AZ, footdoctor33@yahoo.com

Other messages in this thread:

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09/11/2013    

RESPONSES / COMMENTS (NEWS STORIES)- PART 1B

RE: NY Podiatrist Roughed Up by Former Boyfriend (Jennifer Barlow, DPM)

From: Tip Sullivan, DPM

I do not know the female New York podiatrist involved here and I wish her no disrespect. She may be innovative and new in her approach to how she is perceived by the public. Certainly all publications are not free of any bias, but they do have the duty to at least publish the truth. Unfortunately, sometimes the truth hurts.

 

Tip Sullivan, DPM, Jackson, MS, tsdefeet@msfootcenter.net

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06/19/2013    

RESPONSES / COMMENTS (NEWS STORIES)- PART 1B

RE: Scholl Professor Sues Associate Dean for Defamation (Jon Purdy, DPM)

From: Lloyd S. Smith, DPM

Dr. Purdy is mixing multiple issues when he comments about the residency crisis, politics, and colleges of podiatric medicine. The inherent concepts are vastly too complex to summarize in a simple post. They have occupied our best and brightest DPMs and every one of our institutions since I was a student in the early 1970s. The colleges promise to educate and produce a graduate ready for residency training. The profession has worked so very hard to produce training programs to deliver these residents ready to practice in the new world of medicine. The bar keeps moving. The business model changes almost daily. ACOs, EHRs, ICD-10, and so much more never existed 10 years ago. Can we change fast enough? Who is to blame? No one. This is the U.S. healthcare system at work regardless of our politics or profession.

Sending short and simplistic messages that put blame on anyone or any entity is foolhardy and minimizes the challenging issues we all face. 

I deeply respect our institutions and their respective leadership.  Putting our best efforts into the institutions that educated us and the APMA and its state components that fought for our survival as a profession is the best we can all do. Doing anything less allows the current problems to persist for years to come. Offering criticism without working for solutions is the role of the disaffected.

 

Lloyd S. Smith, DPM, Newton, MA, lloydpod@yahoo.com