World Cup: Bert Mandelbaum, M.D. Providing Medical Excellence
When the best soccer players in the world tear on to the field in Brazil over these next few weeks, Bert Mandelbaum, M.D., an orthopedic surgeon and co-chair of medical affairs at the Institute for Sports Sciences in Los Angeles, will be there to ensure that things are going according to plan…at least from a medical perspective. Dr. Mandelbaum, medical director for the FIFA Medical Center of Excellence in Santa Monica, is the FIFA Venue Medical Officer at the Fortaleza Venue. He told OTW, “I have learned much from working on the last five World Cups, and am thrilled to be applying this knowledge to these games. My role is to oversee the medical systems involved, and to connect World Cup doctors to the local emergency system. This involves supervising care of all 700+ athletes, understanding the nuances of doping control, etc.”
“A major part of this is understanding how medicine is practiced in Brazil. It is a complex system; there is a private system alongside a national health system. For the games, each of the 12 stadiums around the country is connected to a health system, and each venue has a medical director. Aside from his or her medical duties, these individuals work to organize major service providers such as security, police, and fire professionals. One of the challenges is security as Brazil has had some issues with high crime areas surrounding the venues. If there are protests they will establish buffers around the stadium(s) in order to ensure that those involved with the games are not exposed to this.”
“On the first day we had orientation meetings where we were introduced to the Brazilian doctors. We reviewed all of the systems and ensured that the medical director for each venue understands the importance of communicating exactly what happening at each critical moment. Everyone must understand what we do when and how it should be done. I think our area of vulnerability will be the connectivity between some of the venues, such as between me and any given venue medical director and between them and the hospitals.”
“Running through it all is the smell and the feel of immense excitement. And when the whistle goes off there is a crescendo of intensity and everything goes from 0-110 MPH.”
Physical Therapy NOT Helpful With Hip OA
A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) has found that among adults with hip osteoarthritis (OA), physical therapy does not produce greater improvements in pain or function as compared to a placebo treatment. Kim Bennell, Professor and Director of the Centre for Health, Exercise and Sports Medicine, in Physiotherapy at the School of Health Sciences, University of Melbourne, led the study. Patients with hip OA were randomly assigned to attend 10 sessions of either active physiotherapy treatment (which included education and advice, manual therapy, home exercise and walking with an aid, if needed) or placebo treatments (inactive ultrasound and gel). The researchers found that patient outcomes were about the same at the 13 and 36 week intervals.
Professor Bennell commented to OTW, “We had expected that ‘real’ physical therapy would have greater benefits for pain and function than placebo physical therapy—in actual fact, while both treatments did improve pain and function, there was no difference in these benefits between the two groups. I think this highlights the very powerful ‘placebo’ effects of seeing a caring therapist who listens, shows empathy and lays hands on the affected part together with the patient’s beliefs and positive expectations around the treatment.”
“We have a number of other trials for people with hip osteoarthritis and others for people with knee osteoarthritis. We are testing a range of different interventions including knee unloading shoes, pain coping skills training and use of a walking stick as well as other studies looking at what factors trigger increases in pain to help us design better treatments.”
Harry N. Herkowitz, M.D. Distinguished Chair in Orthopaedics Created
Beaumont Health System has announced the creation of the Harry N. Herkowitz, M.D. Distinguished Chair in Orthopaedics. This effort was made possible because a cadre of about 300 physicians, friends, family, and former students contributed more than $2.2 million to honor Dr. Herkowitz and Beaumont Health System.
In the June 12, 2014 news release, Jeffrey Fischgrund, M.D., chairman of the department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Beaumont and the first Herkowitz Distinguished Chair appointee said, “If you made a tree of spine surgery, all the branches lead to Harry Herkowitz.” Dr. Fischgrund will use the funds to support ongoing education and research at Beaumont, two areas of utmost importance to Dr. Herkowitz.
Dr. Herkowitz did his orthopedic residency at Beaumont Health System in 1975, followed by a spine fellowship at Pennsylvania Hospital. He was named Chairman of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Beaumont, Royal Oak in 1991.
