Sports Medicine

A Sporting Chance

As a leading academic medical center, Scott & White stays on the cutting edge of Sports Medicine. Scott & White's fellowship-trained sports medicine physicians use the latest technologies and procedures to treat all manner of injuries, from torn ligaments to broken bones to dislocations. Knee ligament reconstruction coupled with bone and cartilage transplant is just one example of the advanced orthopedic care available at Scott & White.

A Sporting Chance

From Quarterly (Winter 2004)

More than 30 years ago, a motorcycle accident left Bill Dugas, Ph.D., with severe damage to his right leg and had him wondering if his days of tennis and racquetball were over. After a year of crutches and rehab, Dr. Dugas was back on the courts, but his problems weren’t over.

Twenty-five years after his accident, and after a steady routine of aerobic exercise, tennis and racquetball, he had surgery on his right knee to repair a torn meniscus. In 2003, the familiar pain came back—this time in his left knee—but the fix wasn’t nearly as easy.

Bone and Cartilage Transplant

A patient of orthopedic surgeon Robert Reeve, M.D., director of the Division of Sports Medicine, Dr. Dugas was ready to hear that he needed surgery. After a series of diagnostic tests, Dr. Reeve soon decided it was time for another trip to the OR.

“When Dr. Dugas went in for surgery, we found out his problems were far more serious than we thought,” Dr. Reeve said. “I saw that he had a torn ACL (anterior cruciate ligament, one of the four major ligaments in the knee), so we had to reconstruct the ligament. I also discovered that he had a full thickness loss of the cartilage surface in his knee joint. We did a bone and cartilage transplant to move healthy cartilage from another part of his body to the location of the damaged cartilage. This is a fairly new technique that we have been using, and it has been very successful.”

Five months after the surgery, and after continuous rehabilitation, Dr. Dugas was back on the court and ready for anything.

Extensive Sports Medicine Treatment

Dr. Dugas is a good example of the type of patient Dr. Reeve and his team of sports medicine surgeons treat throughout the year. Although the Scott & White physicians are the team doctors for the Temple High School football team, among other teams, Dr. Reeve says they treat a wide variety of patients.

“While football season is definitely our busiest time, we see just as many recreational athletes as we do team athletes,” he said. “We treat people in all age ranges, and our team of four sports medicine physicians is specially-trained to deal with the injuries they receive, from torn ligaments to broken bones to dislocations.”

State-of-the-Art Sports Medicine Treatment

Sports medicine has grown in the last few years as more and more people are turning to an active lifestyle. And as the demand for services has increased, so has the demand for new treatments. Scott & White has stayed on the cutting edge of sports medicine, using new techniques and advances to get patients back to their active lifestyles in a shorter amount of time.

“We are performing state-of-the-art ligament reconstruction and cartilage repair in the knee. Our patients have recovered wonderfully with these techniques, and we are always researching innovative ways to treat our patients,” Dr. Reeve said.

The fellowship-trained doctors, along with a certified athletic trainer and several residents, work with many different schools around Central Texas providing medical care, physicals and education about sports injuries. And Dr. Reeve is very proud of his department’s success rate. He says his team can get most people back up and running at their highest possible level, and Dr. Dugas is a good example of that. He’s back on the racquetball court and better than ever – grateful for the expert care that got him there.

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