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Orthopedic care

Orthopedists are doctors who take care of the entire musculoskeletal system. They diagnose and treat conditions such sprains, strains, broken bones, arthritis and osteoporosis. Some of the treatments they offer include recommending lifestyle changes, applying casts and performing surgeries, such as ligament repairs or total joint replacements.

Orthopedic specialists in Uptown Denver

When you have chronic orthopedic pain, we have options to get you back to your normal.

Specialists at Presbyterian/St. Luke's Medical Center treat limb and joint pain along with a wide range of other musculoskeletal conditions. We combine advanced treatments with personalized care to ensure you recover and heal.

Do your knees or hips hurt?

Evaluating your hip and knee pain is the starting point for getting the care you need. Our assessment can help you understand your joints and what to talk about with your doctor.

Evaluating your hip and knee pain is the starting point for getting the care you need. Our assessment can help you understand your joints and what to talk about with your doctor.

Related specialties

Learn more about our related specialties.

Orthopedic conditions we treat

Orthopedic conditions are as simple as a basic fracture or as complex as joint replacement surgery, Our orthopedic specialists personalize care to your needs.

  • Achilles tendon injuries
  • Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tears
  • Arthritis
  • Ataxia
  • Bone cancers
  • Bone diseases
  • Bone spurs
  • Broken bones
  • Bunions
  • Bursitis
  • Carpal tunnel
  • Chorea
  • Crooked bones
  • Diabetic foot ulcers
  • Dislocated joints
  • Fibromyalgia
  • Ganglion cysts
  • Gout
  • Hammer toe
  • Hip disorders
  • Ingrown toenails
  • Meniscus tears
  • Multiple sclerosis (MS)
  • Muscular dystrophy
  • Neuromas
  • Osteoarthritis
  • Osteomyelitis
  • Osteoporosis
  • Plantar fasciitis
  • Rheumatoid arthritis
  • Rotator cuff injuries
  • Runner's knee
  • Scoliosis
  • Spasticity
  • Sports injuries
  • Sprains and strains
  • Stenosis
  • Tardive dyskinesia (TD)
  • Tendinitis
  • Tennis elbow
  • Trigger finger/thumb
  • Whiplash

Orthopedic treatments and services we offer

When you come to us for care, our program features advanced technology and an experienced orthopedic care team. Whether you are seeking care for hip pain or a back injury or something else, we provide comprehensive services to get you back on your feet.

Arthroscopy

Arthroscopy is a minimally invasive procedure. It uses a small camera system and instruments to visualize and repair a joint, such as the knee. It is usually performed on an outpatient basis.

Our bone and joint specialists commonly use arthroscopy for:

  • Improving instability
  • Removing cartilage
  • Removing the joint lining
  • Repairing soft tissue tears
  • Treating early-stage arthritis

One of the most common arthroscopic procedures is hip arthroscopy to repair a labral (cartilage) tear. Most patients can walk with crutches one to two weeks after the procedure while undergoing six weeks of physical therapy.

Ligament and tendon injury care

Ligament and tendon injuries are often associated with sports activities. However, ligament tears can also occur during more "routine" activities, such as reaching overhead for something on a high shelf.

Using a thorough exam and medical imaging, we diagnose your injury and work with you to decide on the appropriate treatment plan. If surgery is necessary, our surgeons are board certified in orthopedics with advanced training in arthroscopic repairs of ligament injuries.

Fracture stabilization

Traumatic injuries to the extremities often result in severe fractures of one or more bones.

There can be a single fracture (break) in the bone, or the bone may be shattered into numerous pieces (comminuted). Additionally, the fracture may be closed or open. An open fracture means there is an injury to the surrounding soft tissues, and the bones are visible.

Our orthopedic doctors may use one of the following options to stabilize a fracture:

  • External fixation — This involves placing pins in the bone on each side of the fracture from the outside of the injured extremity. (The pin is exposed through the skin.) The pins are then connected with a rod that is also outside of the extremity.
  • Internal fixation — This technique is used when the fracture can be realigned, and a plate with screws or an interlocking rod hold the bones in alignment.
  • Ring fixator — This device may be used to keep fractured bones in alignment. It is often used if there is a deformity to correct or if there is bone loss that is not addressed with allograft bone or vascularized bone flaps.

Hand and upper extremity care

The hand is a complex structure, allowing you to execute very fine movements and feel a variety of sensations at any given moment. Our hand specialists understand this complexity and offer highly specialized hand and upper extremity care, including hand rehabilitation.

Some of our hand and arm treatments include:

  • Reimplantation following a traumatic upper extremity amputation
  • Skin and nerve grafting for a hand injury
  • Ulnar nerve decompression

Hip replacement

Hip replacement surgery replaces a damaged or arthritic hip joint with a prosthesis (implant).

Our orthopedic surgeons use the anterior approach for hip replacement whenever possible. This technique allows the doctor to access the hip socket from the front of the hip, moving around the muscle instead of cutting through it. This reduces postoperative pain and the chance of hip dislocation. It also allows for a quicker recovery.

Knee replacement

During a total knee replacement, the entire knee joint is replaced with a prosthetic joint because all parts of the joint are damaged. In a partial knee replacement, only the damaged or diseased parts of the joint are replaced with prostheses.

Based on your age, medical history and the condition of your knee and ligaments, your knee doctor will determine if a partial or total knee replacement is right for you.

Robotic knee surgery

We know ongoing pain in your knee has limited your ability to enjoy the things you love. We want to help you get back to the activities you enjoy and live a life without knee pain.

The surgical team at Presbyterian/St. Luke’s Medical Center (P/SL) uses a state-of-the-art robotic system to make your surgery less invasive and more precise and get you back to an active life faster.

What is robotic knee surgery?

Dr. Kareem Sobky, a renowned orthopedic surgeon, is specially trained in robotic knee surgery. He and the P/SL surgical team use a very effective robotic system as a high-tech assistant during surgery.

Your surgery is not performed by the robot alone. Instead, the robot helps your team create an individualized, detailed plan for your surgery. It then aids your doctor during surgery by providing real-time images of the inside of your knee. The robot also holds tools in place and helps navigate delicate areas. This allows your surgeon to precisely place and size your knee replacement to match your anatomy and restore your knee as close as possible to the state it was before arthritis or injury.

Who can have robotic knee surgery?

This kind of surgery might be right for you if:

  • You have severe knee pain, swelling or stiffness and exhausted other treatments
  • Your doctor has diagnosed either a degenerative joint disease such as osteoarthritis, traumatic arthritis, avascular necrosis, rheumatoid arthritis or knee deformity and instability
  • You have not found enough pain relief with treatments such as bracing, medication, physical therapy, and injections

Only your doctor can determine if you are eligible to have robotic knee surgery. Your doctor will consider your health history and current needs to help decide if this surgery would be right for you.

How does robotic knee surgery work?

In the operating room, small state-of-the-art cameras are attached to your leg. The robot tracks the motion of the cameras, making thousands of data points to assess motion, rotation and stability of the knee relative to your hip and ankle.

Throughout your surgery, the robot’s camera and trackers continuously assess the exact position of your leg, adjusting as necessary to ensure the very best fit as well as alignment to within 1 degree, and enhanced stability. This also allows for less exposure to the bone marrow and less bleeding during surgery.

What are the benefits of robotic knee surgery?

The robot allows Dr. Sobky and the team to take the least invasive approach. Additionally, the high-level planning and assistance during your procedure help make the surgery more accurate. The more accurate the procedure, the more normal the knee should feel. This often means reduced blood loss, less pain, shorter stay, faster recovery, and potentially longer-lasting knee replacement.

For more information on robotic knee surgery, please call (877) 752-2737.

Limb preservation

For more than 30 years, the Institute for Limb Preservation at Presbyterian/St. Luke's Medical Center has been the Rocky Mountain region's premier facility for treating diseases and traumatic injuries of the extremities. Here, we provide a highly specialized limb preservation program for people at risk of losing limbs.

Our goal is to salvage the limb and avoid amputation. As such, we have a multidisciplinary team, which includes vascular surgeons, orthopedists, plastic surgeons, neurologists and infectious disease specialists. This highly esteemed limb preservation team works collaboratively on complex cases, such as treating bone tumors with intra-arterial chemotherapy and a growing prosthesis.

Spine care

The Spine Center at Presbyterian/St. Luke's Medical Center is a 36-bed unit dedicated to spine health. Here, our spine specialists diagnose and treat a range of conditions, from infantile scoliosis to cervical stenosis. We also offer pain management techniques, minimally invasive treatments and spine surgery to restore your health.

Orthopedic rehabilitation

Physical therapy may be prescribed to help you recover from an injury or to help you make a full, healthy recovery after surgery. To help with that, we provide inpatient and outpatient physical therapy and rehabilitation services at our hospital.

Targeted muscle reinnervation (TMR) after amputation

Up to 85 percent of people who have had an amputation experience phantom limb, neuroma and residual limb pain. By rerouting nerves damaged during amputation and giving them a place to transmit their signals, TMR can help to reduce these types of pain. At Presbyterian/St. Luke’s Medical Center our innovative team has provided this advanced, delicate procedure — one of the few centers in the nation — since 2015.

Types of TMR

TMR is an innovative procedure that can improve prosthetic use if you have above-elbow amputations and shoulder disarticulations. We offer both primary and secondary TMR as part of the Institute for Limb Preservation, a unique program specializing in the treatment of conditions and diseases that place you at risk of losing a limb.

Primary or acute TMR (above elbow amputation and shoulder disarticulation) is performed at the time of amputation. As part of the amputation, the nerves that control the hand, wrist and elbow are rerouted into residual muscles in order to control a prosthesis in an intuitive manner.

People with primary TMR can control their prosthesis intuitively, simply by thinking about natural movements. Nerves that control the hand and wrist are rerouted to residual muscles and thus by thinking of the hand or wrist motion that is required for a task, the muscle will amplify that signal and send it to the prosthesis to be carried out naturally. In other words, think about closing the hand and the prosthesis will close the hand.

Secondary or delayed TMR is performed for people who have already had an amputation without TMR. This can be done to treat phantom limb pain, painful neuromas or residual limb pain.

It can also help with better prosthetic control for upper extremity amputations. In this case, rather than learning to use a prosthetic, the prosthetic learns how to interpret your desire for movement. Additionally, when nerves are rerouted to specific muscles, you have more targeted muscle function, allowing for more refined movements and a wider range of motion with a myoelectric prosthetic.


Who is a candidate for TMR

If you have significant phantom pain or residual limb and neuroma pain at all levels of amputation in the upper and lower extremities, you should be evaluated to see if you are a candidate for TMR. Additionally, those interested in the procedure to better control their prosthetic can undergo a medical review to determine their eligibility.


The TMR team

As part of our Institute for Limb Preservation, our TMR team is a multidisciplinary group of professionals with years of specialized training and experience. The team members include:

  • Plastic surgeon
  • Physical therapist
  • Orthopedic surgeons
  • Prosthetists
  • Certified hand therapist/occupational therapist
  • Patient navigator

For a consultation to discuss if TMR is right for you, please call our patient navigator at (800) 262-5462.


Orthopedic and Spine Care Center

We offer an online tour of our Spine Center.

Our Orthopedic care Locations

Currently Viewing:

Presbyterian/St. Luke's Medical Center
1719 E 19th Ave
Denver, CO 80218
 (720) 754 - 6000

Currently Viewing:

Presbyterian/St. Luke's Medical Center
1719 E 19th Ave
Denver, CO 80218
 (720) 754 - 6000
Rocky Mountain Hospital for Children
2001 N. High St
Denver, CO 80205
 (720) 754 - 1000

0.1 miles

Speer Blvd. Doctors' Offices
777 E. Speer Blvd.
Suite 200
Denver, CO 80203

1.9 miles

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