Duke Medical Minutes are produced by local sports radio affiliates, and allow Duke specialists to give a brief snapshot into health offerings at Duke.

In this episode, Dean C. Taylor, MD, discusses knee injuries in both professional and recreational athletes, and the treatment offerings at Duke.

Listen to the Podcast

Podcast Transcript

Announcer: We’re talking with Dr. Dean Taylor with the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Duke Sports Medicine.

You also work on knees and in this day and age with the technology that’s available and the research that’s available it’s amazing to see athletes after knee issues get  back on the court or the field as quickly as they do. Why is that?

Taylor: I think it’s a couple of reasons. One is our rehab is significantly better, so if you have a surgeon that’s working with a dedicated physical therapist, they can really decrease that time off from whatever injury it is or from whatever surgical procedure that they’ve had.

Announcer Now, the rehab for the athlete’s going to be a little different from that of the rehab for the normal person listening to this.

Taylor: Yeah, in cases of professional or high-level college athletes, they have a dedicated physical therapist -- an athletic trainer -- working with them every day. So they may have a quicker return following surgery or injury.

At Duke Sports Medicine, we have dedicated physical therapists in the same building as our surgeons. So, we can provide some of that for the recreational athlete, but they’re going to have a little bit longer recovery because they can’t spend so much time on the rehab.