Baptist Health Orthopedic Care (2024)

FAQs

Is an orthopedist the same as an orthopedic surgeon? ›

An orthopedic surgeon (orthopedist) is a medical specialist who focuses on injuries and diseases affecting your musculoskeletal system (bones, muscles, joints and soft tissues). Although this type of doctor is a surgeon, they often help people get relief with nonsurgical therapies.

Even if you're free of any deformities and are in fairly good health, your primary care doctor may refer you to an orthopedist if you experience persistent pain in any of your joints, bones, or muscles as a result of exercise-related overuse injuries or accidents.

An orthopedic doctor (also called an orthopedist) treats injuries and diseases involving muscles, bones, joints, ligaments, and tendons. These include conditions such as arthritis, hip dysplasia, scoliosis, bone cancer, back pain, and sports injuries. They can provide surgical and nonsurgical treatments.

Orthopedics is a medical specialty that deals with treating bones and muscles. Orthopedic surgery is the branch of medicine focused on concerned with diseases, injuries, and conditions of the musculoskeletal system relating to the body's muscles and skeleton. This includes the joints, ligaments, tendons, and nerves.

Orthopedic doctors have the specialized knowledge and training needed to treat a wide variety of problems affecting the musculoskeletal system — bones, joints, cartilage, muscles, and nerves — including the knees. Orthopedic doctors can treat acute and chronic knee pain and improve your quality of life.

For mild injuries or conditions, your orthopedic doctor may recommend activity modification in conjunction with at-home treatment methods such as extended rest, ice and/or heat therapy, compression devices or braces, and over-the-counter medications such as Tylenol and Advil.

Yes, if you have any type of nerve damage, then an orthopedic doctor is the best specialist to meet with for diagnosis and treatment. Since orthopedic doctors specialize in the spine and musculoskeletal system, they have specific training for addressing pinched and damaged nerves.

Orthopedic doctors (sometimes also called orthopaedic doctors or orthopaedic surgeons) are doctors who focus on caring for your bones, joints, ligaments, nerves, and tendons (the tissue that connects bones and joints). These parts of your body are also referred to as your “musculoskeletal system.”

Physical Examination

For example, severe joint pain may prohibit you from simple activities such as opening jars. For the physical exam, the doctor will evaluate your strength, reflexes, range of motion, and skin condition. He or she may have you stand up, sit down, and lie down.

How painful is orthopedic surgery? ›

As a result, orthopaedic surgeries frequently cause a fair amount of pain, stiffness, atrophy and weakness. Furthermore, after surgery, protection of the operative limb is often required. This can lead to further atrophy and stiffness. All of this often results in reduced function and a disruption of your life.

No, an orthopedic doctor will first try to place the patient on a treatment plan to allow an injury or fracture to heal first. Surgery will be the next option if the injury or degenerative aging condition is not improving.

The number of surgeries that a surgeon completes in a week will really depend on the type of surgeon. An orthopedic doctor will be fixing fractures or other problems with the bone. If they are only taking care of fractures on a given day, they could probably complete 8-10 surgeries in a given day.

An orthopedic oncologist is an orthopedic surgeon who subspecializes in the treatment of bone and soft tissue tumors, including bone and soft tissue sarcomas, skeletal metastatic disease and noncancerous bone tumors.

No Difference in Meaning

“Orthopaedics” is commonly regarded as the British and academic spelling of the term while “orthopedics” can be considered its Americanized version; however, you may see these spellings used interchangeably.

Orthodontics specifically deals with the misalignment of teeth. For this treatment, we use braces to fix a bad bite by straightening crooked, crowded or gapped teeth. Orthopedic treatment, in contrast, deals with improving the skeletal structure of your face and jaw.