THE BARE BONES
Olympic Doc
Amadeus Mason, a sports medicine doctor at Emory’s Orthopaedics and Spine Center, at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio, which he attended as the team physician for the men’s and women’s USA Track and Field teams.
The Leg Bone’s Connected to the … Many of us know the feeling: a tendon we stressed during jogging, tennis, or lawn work continues to dog us, especially during similar activities. Almost
40 million people in the U.S. suffer from tendinopathy, a chronic injury to those flexible cords of tissue that attach our muscles to our bones. In general, patients use ice, rest, pain relievers and injections, physical therapy, surgery, or other topical treatments to alleviate symptoms. But Emory sports medicine physician Kenneth Mautner and colleagues from Georgia Tech have developed a tool that could improve healing speed. The Automated Percutaneous Needle Tenotomy instrument punctuates the tendon with a small needle, causing a controlled injury,
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EMORY MEDICINE
which initiates healing and growth of new, healthy tendon. Using needles to aggravate injured tendons is an existing treatment for tendinopathy, although it is currently conducted with a traditional needle or with a percutaneous procedure in a surgical center. The new instrument would allow the treatment to be performed in an orthopedic office. A prototype has been tested with promising results. “The biomechanics of this procedure are already proven to be effective,” says Cliff Michaels, assistant director of Emory’s Office of Technology Transfer. “This just increases the efficiency and reliability of the treatment.” —Aspen Ono 18C