Orthopedics

Our Total Joint and Spine Health Services unit creates comprehensive courses of treatment for patients, combining expert clinical care with a patient-centered focus.

We offer total joint replacement for the hip, knee, and shoulder. Total replacement is a surgical procedure in which damaged portions of a joint are replaced with artificial parts made of metal and plastic, allowing you to move more easily and without pain.

We believe that you play a key role in promoting a successful recovery. Our goal is to involve you in each step of your treatment—starting with education resources and consultation with a dedicated care coordinator to help with preoperative care and discharge planning.

You’ll receive a comprehensive patient guidebook to follow from six weeks pre-op until three months post-op and beyond. Classes to prepare you for your procedure are scheduled two or three weeks before surgery, with a coordinated after-care support program so you keep making progress while you recover at home.

Our physicians treat many acute and chronic conditions, including:

Sports Medicine

Hancock Health works with both adult and child athletes to recover from injuries that affect their performance. In younger children who are involved in sports, acute injuries typically include bruises, sprains, and strains, but can also result in broken bones. Teenage athletes are more likely to sustain more severe injuries, including dislocations, fractures, and torn ligaments. Although these injuries can also occur in adults, they are more problematic in children because they may affect growth or cause deformity.

Hancock Orthopedics’ expert surgeons treat your bone, joint, or muscle problems with some of the state’s most advanced technology, then offer therapies close to home that help you heal faster.

Outpatient Arthroscopic Surgery

Minimally invasive arthroscopic surgery allows an orthopedic surgeon to see your joint without a large incision. This type of outpatient procedure can help treat ankle, knee, and shoulder conditions. The surgeon inserts a long, thin tube with a video camera and a light on the end to diagnose and treat structural problems within a joint that’s causing pain, instability, or other concerns.

Before deciding on arthroscopy as a solution to your joint problems, you might want to consider the alternatives. These include: exercise and weight loss, physical therapy, medications, dietary supplements, and joint replacement surgery.

Additional orthopedic surgeries include:

• Bone fusion (arthrodesis)
• Bilateral knee replacement (arthroplasty)
• Carpal tunnel release
• External fixation (holding broken bone fragments together with pins outside the skin)
• Hip hemiarthroplasty, bipolar (a partial hip joint replacement)
• Incision and drainage (I&D) – hand
• Intramedullary nail and rod surgeries (aligning/stabilizing broken bones)
• Total reverse shoulder replacement (treating arthritic shoulders that have a rotator cuff tear)
• Unicondylar knee replacement (for patients with damage on only one side of the knee joint)

Podiatric surgeries:

• Ankle fusion
• Bunionectomy
• Total ankle replacement (ankle arthroplasty)
• Achilles tendon repair
• Brostrom repair (repairing ligaments on the outside of the ankle)
• Calcaneal osteotomy (correcting foot deformities through a controlled heel bone break)
• Debridement (removing damaged tissue around a wound)
• Flexor tendon release
• Ganglion cyst removal
• Gastrocnemius recession (lengthening tendons and muscles in the back of the leg)
• Metatarsal excision
• Metatarsal osteotomy
• Metatarsophalangeal joint fusion (MTP fusion)
• Open reduction and internal fixation (ORIF)
• Peroneal tendon repair
• Tarsal tunnel release

In many cases, patients need rehabilitation services to get back to full strength or deal with new physical conditions. Hancock Health is here to help. We offer a comprehensive range of expert rehabilitation services for children and adults at locations across Hancock County—including our patients’ homes.