Local Orthopedic Care for All Ages [Dr. Jeff Dressander]

I'm Jeff Dressander. I'm orthopedic surgeon with 20 years of experience. And I enjoy orthopedics because it allows me to treat patients of all ages with bone and joint problems.

What is your specialty?

For the past 20 years, I've been practicing general orthopedics, which means I've been taking care of patients from toddlers all the way up to grandparents in age for a variety of medical problems or injuries, broken bones, strained ligaments, strained muscles, sports injuries, and the like.

What is general orthopedics?

General orthopedics is the care of the bones and joints of the body that affect patients of all ages. The problems are a little different when we get older than when we were teenagers, but we're trained to treat a wide variety across most age groups.

What are the most common orthopedic cases?

Some of the most common things I see in the clinic would be shoulder problems or knee problems. Hip would be a close third, I guess. Although, as patients get older, knees and hips tend to be the most common thing that we'll see in the clinic.

Often we see kids after a fall, and mom and dad say, "Little Tommy is not walking like he used to, he's limping, he's crying a little bit more when he walks." But it can be a challenge when the kids are really young and not really verbalizing. So, we often rely on physical examination and X-rays to help us determine what's going on.

We treat a wide variety of athletic injuries, most commonly shoulder injuries and knee injuries.

How are orthopedic issues diagnosed?

We start out by interviewing the patient, trying to get their story about what might have happened. Sometimes there's no obvious injury, sometimes people describe the pain in their shoulder developing over time. It's more common, I think, in older patients that they have an ache or pain that they've been living with, and all of a sudden, it starts to get a little bit worse. And that's what usually brings them in to see us.

So, once we interview the patient, get an idea of what might have happened, we talk about how it's been affecting their everyday life, the next step would be to examine the patient and check the joint for motion and strength. Oftentimes, what we do causes them pain, and that type of response gets helpful for us to determine, it could be a rotator cuff, it could be a sprain. And then a regular set of X-rays often gives a lot of good information and can go a long way to helping us diagnose a problem.

What treatments are offered in addition to surgery?

People are often a little scared when they come in, thinking that they're gonna be rushed off to the operating room. Surgery is always a last resort. Sometimes surgery is inevitable, say if we're dealing with a broken bone that you need to walk on. But for most things that we see, a surgery is not needed at all, and we can treat patients with medications, physical therapy, or rehabilitation. And that goes a long way to helping probably upwards of 90% of patients get back to doing what they like to do without surgery.

Why do you recommend orthopedic care at Brookings Health System?

Well, here at Brookings Health System, we have the latest technology available to us. I've been trained in the latest techniques to treat a wide variety of injuries, so we can take care of a majority of orthopedic conditions right here in Brookings.