Physicians at Baptist Health Sports Medicine utilize a variety of nonsurgical methods to treat patients and athletes with musculoskeletal pain
LOUISVILLE — Baptist Health Sports Medicine in Louisville provides a wide variety of orthopedic care, including surgery. Mark Puckett, MD, and W. Michael Hughes, DO, help patients find nonsurgical options that can alleviate the need for surgery.
“Our primary role is to serve as another resource for care of musculoskeletal pain for our patients and to give a perspective outside of traditional orthopedic surgery. We don’t compete with our surgeons, we partner with them. We provide a different way of looking at problems,” Puckett says.
Puckett came to Baptist Health in 2012 after receiving his medical degree from the University of Louisville, followed by residency and fellowship at Self Regional Healthcare in Greenwood, South Carolina.
Hughes arrived at Baptist in 2016. He obtained his medical degree from the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine and completed his residency at Floyd Medical Center in Rome, Georgia. A sports medicine fellowship at U of L followed.
Active Retirees to Weekend Warriors to Professional & Student Athletes
Puckett and Hughes each see about 100 patients per week. These patients range in age from a nine-year-old seeking care for a fractured growth plate to “someone who has had knee pain for years and just wants to get it checked out. That’s the breadth of it,” says Hughes.
The doctors encounter professional, college, and high school athletes, amateurs training for marathons or cycling events, and weekend warriors, but they assess all these patients in the same manner, no matter the fitness level or end goal. “When someone comes in with a complaint, our task is to determine what’s the source of the pain or dysfunction and what’s the best way to manage that,” says Puckett.
“If someone comes in with a torn ACL, they need a surgeon, but many times there are nonsurgical options for an injury and it’s up to the patient to determine how aggressive they want to be with treatment,” says Puckett.
A professional athlete might be in a time crunch and want to move as quickly as possible because their livelihood depends on it, whereas a weekend warrior might prefer to take things slowly due to family and job commitments.
“There’s not a lot of difference in what we would offer to them or the intentionality that we would give them. The difference is in their expectations and the amount of resources, including time and finances, that they may want to invest in that problem. But we will treat them the same way,” Puckett says.
Puckett and Hughes see this as one of the strengths of their program; they have the resources to treat these injuries within the framework and timeline that works best for the patient.
Nonsurgical Services
Orthopedists are well known for providing injections to relieve pain, but the scope of services Baptist Health Sports Medicine offers is much broader.
Baptist Health Sports Medicine offers X-ray services to diagnose broken bones and ultrasound diagnostics for guided injections. Hughes performs osteopathic manipulative treatment (OMT) when appropriate to help with conditions such as acute neck or back pain. The practice sees many patients for regenerative medicine, including platelet-rich plasma (PRP) therapy, when a patient’s own blood growth factors are used to treat a soft-tissue problem.
Puckett and Hughes also encounter patients who present with comorbidities often found in Kentucky and Indiana, such as heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and smoking. Because they are also family medicine practitioners, they understand how those comorbidities may influence a patient’s health issues.
Growth of Sports Medicine
Puckett and Hughes have seen the awareness of their practice, and the services they offer, grow substantially in the last decade. Puckett says they are currently the busiest they have ever been.
“A lot of folks didn’t understand what we were willing and capable of managing, and it took a little time to build that confidence, but we’ve been able to earn trust with our colleagues and with patients. We’re able to give good, compassionate care for people; we’ve grown on both sides because of that, by earning the trust of our colleagues and understanding the role of our specialty. Truly, earning trust from patients as well as providing good care makes them come back to us or tell their friends about us,” Puckett says.
As far as the growth of sports medicine as a whole, both physicians believe PRP and other regenerative procedures will continue to increase in number and popularity.
“When PRP first came out, it was kind of science fiction, a last-ditch effort to see if it works, but now it’s become commonplace,” Puckett says. Now, says Hughes, “People come in requesting it.”
The doctors also believe the practice will continue to see growth in nonsurgical, minimally invasive, office-based procedures. These include tendon debridement for scar tissue, radiofrequency ablation, and nerve blocks around the knee.
These procedures can “supplement or even offload surgical volume. In-office surgical procedures are getting smaller and more out-patient all the time,” says Puckett.
The Whole Community Benefits
Both originally from Louisville, Puckett and Hughes are involved in local sports. Puckett is the team physician for Ballard High school. Hughes works with Atherton High School. Both physicians assist Spalding University, where Hughes serves as the medical director for their athletic training program. Along with other physicians in the area, they work with the Louisville Kings, a new professional football organization.
This partnership has led to networking opportunities where Puckett and Hughes are able to spread the word about the nonsurgical services they provide at Baptist Health. “I think a lot of times there was ‘Those guys do injections.’ Now there is a lot more recognition from the hospital and the community as a whole regarding what our specialty involves,” says Hughes.
Sports medicine is exactly where both physicians want to be.
Hughes says, “I felt this calling to provide a care and a service to people and to be thankful for the gifts I’ve been given. I’m reminded of that daily. It’s rewarding to hear patients say they are no longer in pain and are able to do what they want to do again.”
For Puckett, his motivation is 100% founded in his faith. “I believe fundamentally that I serve the God who made people in His image, and that I was given the opportunity to treat patients as God’s means of caring for them. It’s a core belief that determines why I do what I do and brings a great deal of joy,” Puckett states.
The community is lucky to have them both.