A twist of fate led Dr. Sanjiv Mehta to become an orthopedic surgeon
BARDSTOWN Sanjiv Mehta, MD, grew up in Chandigarh, India, the son of two physicians – his father was a gastroenterologist and his mother was a pediatric gastroenterologist. Inspired by them, he began his own journey into the medical field. He went to medical school in India, which was part of the plan, but completing an orthopedic residency in Chandigarh was not.
“In India, we were in a general internship program before we received our medical degree,” Mehta says. “I had graduated number two in my medical school class, and it was assumed I would go into internal medicine. It was 1985-86, and at that point, orthopedics was barely a recognized specialty in India. In India, they used to say, ‘All the dumb guys go into orthopedics.’”
Internal medicine was the plan, but a twist of fate changed everything on one night during his internship. A patient came in with a mid-shaft femur fracture, and the on-site orthopedic surgeon was already treating another patient with an identical injury. Adding to the urgency was the surgeon’s social calendar.
“The surgeon told me, ‘I need you to do this surgery with me because I have a hot date tonight,’” Mehta says. “He said, ‘I’m going to be yelling directions to you and you’re going to follow my directions with no questions asked.’ One hour later, I had a rod in place in the femur and I closed the wound. I was shaking like a leaf. He slapped me on the back and said, ‘Good job, man.’ He made his date that night and married that girl.”
The next day, Mehta checked on his patient, happy to see that he was recovering well.
“He had a smile on his face. He was thankful. All the pain was gone,” Mehta says. “He asked, ‘Can you release me to go home? If I don’t go back home and start working, my family will starve.’ So, I gave him crutches and pain pills and released him.”
Seeing the impact that he could have as an orthopedic surgeon, Mehta sensed that was what he was meant to do.
“I looked up to the heavens and said, ‘God, I thank you for showing me the light.’ That’s what I wanted to be – an orthopedic surgeon. I never looked back.”
Holistic Approach to Orthopedics
Mehta began orthopedic training at the University of Louisville in 1993 and has been a board-certified orthopedic surgeon since 1998. He credits UofL professor and physician David Seligson, MD, for being his mentor and guru.
“I still seek some guidance from him every now and then with some tough cases,” Mehta says.
Mehta also points to his family for inspiring his journey. He constantly seeks inspiration from his wife and soulmate, Susan. In addition to the example set by his parents, his sister is a radiologist in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and her husband is an orthopedic surgeon. Mehta’s daughter Aakriti Carrubba is a minimally invasive gynecological surgeon at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida. His younger son Aditya recently graduated from Emory University in Atlanta with a master’s in public health. Mehta himself just earned his master’s in health care administration from Cornell last December.
“I’m 60-plus now. I have zero cynicism about medicine. Some doctors become cynical and burnt out. I don’t know what those terms mean,” he says. “My wife, Susan, is a rock for me. She inspires me. She is an RN by training and is part of a startup company. They are dealing with holistic, metabolic health, and healthy lifespans.”
Mehta finds value in educating his own patients in the importance of overall health and successful recovery from surgery.
“You cannot get yourself to a healthy place just by replacing one knee,” he says. “You really need to go holistically, affecting every aspect of your life. I have become a very passionate advocate of health styles.”
Technology and General Orthopedics
At Saint Joseph Health’s Flaget Memorial Hospital in Bardstown, Mehta performs a wide range of orthopedic procedures, including hand surgery such as carpal tunnel and trigger finger release. He does joint replacements including anterior hip replacements, total shoulder arthroplasties, and total knee replacements. He also sees trauma cases such as fractures.
Many of these surgeries are performed with the welcome assistance of artificial intelligence. “I am a huge proponent of technology,” says Mehta, who has done approximately 450 robotic-assisted knee replacements since 2022. “The robotic technology takes our skills to the next level and makes me a better surgeon. It makes me appreciate things I cannot see. For example, when I do a knee replacement, it is my job to put the knee perfectly balanced between the hip and the ankle of the patient. However, I don’t see the hip. I don’t see the ankle. I can just see the knee in my vision, but the robot can see it. That helps me to do a much better job with knee alignments. How it translates to a patient is that my incisions are smaller, the blood loss is less, and we are able to discharge a large majority of our patients to go home same day.”
Mehta not only welcomes the aid of artificial intelligence, he is actively advocating for its increased use to better serve patients.
“Artificial intelligence is helping us to acquire more and more data,” he says. “It will tell us how quickly patients went back to work, how quickly they were able to get back to their lives. That data will tell us about the longevity of the implants.”
In the future, Mehta hopes to begin implanting trackers into patients’ knees to track step counts, cadences, physical therapy, mobility, and potential infection. “I will get those signals on my phone and laptop, and will get those patients back in to see me earlier so I can intervene earlier if the joints are failing,” he says. “This will also strengthen telemedicine. I have patients who travel 50 to 100 miles to see me.”
Gratitude and Empathy
Mehta’s genuine desire to care for his patients is transparent. In discussing their course of treatment and the importance of overall health, he speaks to them passionately about how to improve their health. “I credit my team in the office, the OR, and physical therapy for great outcomes and high level of patient satisfaction,” he said. “I could not do this without the ladies that back me up!”
“Do it for somebody, do it for yourself. I use these lines in my office just about every day,” he says. “My level of fulfillment has no boundaries. I feel so fulfilled every day. The gratitude I get back by serving humanity is my reward. There’s not a single day that goes by that I don’t feel like I’m helping somebody, and that I don’t have gratitude to my good Lord, to say ‘Lord, thank you for putting me in this place where I can influence people in a positive way.’”