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First, to my request before you stop reading. If you like or feel there is value in the content on the Angry Orthopod please spread the word on social media or any way you feel you can. This is particularly true when you have personally benefited as a result. This is a groundswell process and thus requires your support. Thank you.

please spread the word on social media or any way you feel you can

social media share about the angry orthopod
I know, you have been losing sleep at night wondering, “Where did he go?” As arrogant as I am, even I don’t believe that. OK, I was not actually on a sabbatical. I electively retired from active clinical practice to change careers. I am still in the medical field with just a different angle on things. This change has made me busier than a rooster in a henhouse. Things have finally settled and I am back, angrier and sassier than ever.

Even though clinical practice for me is over after 3 decades, my desire to help you all here has only strengthened. Make no mistake, the experience that has allowed me to question and challenge mainstream establishment medicine is alive and well.

As a reminder, I am not angry at you unless you give me a reason. I am angry (code: trying to make a change and promoting preventative and non-operative health) at my medical colleagues who, in my humble hubris opinion, are all too often not giving needed time and/or non-operative treatment enough of a chance and opting too quickly for surgical solutions. How convenient.

my desire to help you all here has only strengthened

surgery the ultimate placeboRecently I read a transformative book that confirmed my long-held conscious realization that surgery wasn’t all that. Professor (Dr.) Ian Harris, the author of Surgery, The Ultimate Placebo: A Surgeon Cuts through the Evidence, is a seasoned Australian orthopaedic surgeon, traumatologist and serial researcher. Amazon sums it up perfectly, “For many complaints and conditions, the benefits from surgery are lower, and the risks higher, than you or your surgeon think.” Dr. Harris focuses more on the ineffectiveness of many common mainstream surgeries accurately covering the evidence that they are all too often no better than doing nothing and can clearly cause harm. I would vehemently add that there are many curative non-operative treatments out there that are either unknown by your doc or are suppressed.

When it comes to the risks and surgical complications, we surgeons have a saying you need to know: “The risk of complications for [insert your surgery here] is about 1%, until it happens to you, then it is 100%.” And every surgery brings the risk of harm into play. Period. Harris covers this point to perfection.

Don’t get me wrong, surgery definitely has its place and can be life-changing, but only after an informed, careful consideration and a collaborative decision process between surgeon and patient. You are in control and you have the right and power, and you should make these critical decisions for yourself. I highly recommend this book whether surgery is a consideration or not.

surgery…a collaborative decision process between surgeon and patient

Last request, which concerns requests. I welcome your requests for blogs on subjects that might be of interest to you and others. Please keep focused on basically foot and ankle issues. I will be selective on which are chosen especially if there are numerous requests.

Finally, I am in the process of answering many of your regretfully neglected comments/questions you all have posted over the past 18 months. Even if your problem has resolved or the question is “off the table” for you, I will still answer because the questions are excellent and the answers are good for all to see.

Stay healthy my friends,

AO