Bucks
Dr. Larry Miller Shoulder Operation – Part One
Dear Friends,
Good
morning. “Have you had anything for breakfast,” Diane Fahey asked me as we
walked toward the operating suites at the
I was at Cooper to watch Dr. Larry Miller operate on a patient’s shoulder. He’s the Chief of Orthopedic Surgery at Cooper and specializes in knees and shoulders.
I wanted to see a shoulder operation because Miller had repaired my torn rotator cuff five months ago. Because he told me that I would be conscious during my operation, I asked him to place a TV monitor by my head so I could see him perform.
Boy did he satisfy my curiosity!
I was able to watch him operate on my shoulder because his team had introduced a nerve block into my shoulder. I was conscious throughout most of the operation, although I felt nothing because of the anesthesia.
I thought about Nurse Fahey’s questions. What was I in for? I noticed a not-so-reassuring sign as we left the waiting room. “Check in here for Pain Management,” it read. I bravely told her that my stomach was fine…fortunately, it was.
I’ve known Miller for many years as a fellow rower. He rows three days each week at six in the morning, before heading off to operate. Although he’s 54, Miller is very youthful looking with thick wavy hair. The female rowers think that he’s drop dead gorgeous.
Several hours after I watched the shoulder operation, I asked him if he was concerned about varicose veins? Miller is used to 10-hour days, standing over a patient’s knee or shoulder. He believes that rowing three days each week has kept varicose veins at bay.
Prior to his second of five cases
that day, we sat in a lounge area. I remembered that his father entered the
history books a long time ago. Dr. Bernard Miller was one of the developers of
the heart and lung machine for open-heart surgery in the early 1950’s. He was
at the
It’s a small world. That invention prolonged my life in 1981 when I underwent by-pass surgery at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center.
Well, acorns don’t fall far from
the tree, as the old adage goes. A generation later, in 1991, Larry Miller
became the first orthopedic surgeon in the
And speaking of knees, Larry Miller had his own knee repaired arthroscopically by his surgical partner, Dr. John Salvo. A few months ago, Larry felt a twinge in his knee while running. Three days of rowing six miles wasn’t enough exercise for him. One day, after his fourth operation, he’d experienced enough pain and asked his partner to “scope” his knee. Twelve days later, Larry was back on the river. It’s tough to slow this man down.
While waiting for the news that his second patient of the day was ready for a SLAP (superior labral tear repair), I met the six-man team. Besides Miller, Dr. Ramone Perez is an orthopedic resident; Al Severance, the OR technician; Barbara Riley, circulating nurse; and David Creel, an RN in training. Anesthesiologist Dr. Renee Waters had deftly administered the nerve bloc to Miller’s patient.
Larry told me that the SLAP procedure repairs overhead athletic injuries. Sports that require the overhead or throwing motion cause the problems. Tossing the javelin, the tennis serve and overhead smash, lacrosse, and baseball…especially pitching…brings athletes to the surgeon’s door. In my case, years of tennis finally wore out my rotator cuff. Rowing wasn’t the culprit.
As we walked into one of the two operating suites that he uses, I marveled at the high tech equipment. Miller told me that it costs $900,000 to outfit one of his operating rooms…and the machinery is replaced every three years or so.
Next week, I’ll describe the actual operation that I observed. The patient was a 43 year old woman whose nickname is “T Bird.” It was fascinating.
Sincerely,
Charles Meredith