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Questions & Answers
John Leddy is clinical assistant professor of orthopaedics and associate director of the Sports Medicine Institute.
What is University Sports Medicine?
It is a clinical facility that provides comprehensive sports medicine and musculoskeletal medical care to patients of all ages and abilities. It is located on the UB South Campus, in Farber Hall in the medical school. We also have a satellite office on Youngs Road in Williamsville, near Millard Fillmore Suburban Hospital.
What services do you provide?
We provide assessment and treatment of a wide range of orthopaedic, musculoskeletal, and sports medicine problems. We have radiology on-site to do our own X-rays and we apply braces and casts for bone and joint injuries. We have a large physical therapy unit for injury and post-surgical rehabilitation. We specialize in sports injuries and our goals are rapid access to evaluation, specific diagnosis and rehabilitation, and safe and speedy return to play. We have experts in orthopaedic sports medicine (arthroscopic knee and shoulder surgery), primary-care sports medicine (non-operative musculoskeletal problems such as muscle strains, ligament sprains, overuse injuries, back pain, etc.), sport-specific training and rehabilitation, strength and conditioning, podiatry and orthotic fabrication, women's sports medicine issues, etc. We treat all types of injuries, from fractures requiring casts to sprained ankles requiring exercise therapy and a brace.
Do you treat the general public, as well as the members of the university community?
Yes, we treat UB students and staff as well as people from all over Western New York. We get referrals from the UB Student Health Center. In addition, many physicians in the area send us their young athletes. We also treat the parents of these athletes, who get injured during sports or at work—the "industrial athlete". We have regularly scheduled appointments throughout the week. To accomplish our goal of rapid access to assessment, we have a walk-in clinic Monday through Friday, starting at 4 p.m. Patients can call and ask to be seen that day for acute musculoskeletal problems—for example, an acutely sprained ankle or knee. The walk-in clinic is staffed by health-care providers with special training in orthopaedics and sports medicine. We accept all forms of insurance, but patients must have a referral if their insurance requires one.
University Sports Medicine is the team physician for a number of organizations, including UB, Erie Community College, the Buffalo public schools and the Buffalo Destroyers. What is your role as the team physician?
As team physicians, we take care of the injuries and medical problems that athletes develop during the course of their sports participation. We perform pre-season physical examinations to ensure that athletes are safe to participate and we attend the games to treat on-field injuries. We also guide athletes through their post-injury rehabilitation and determine when it is safe for them to return to action.
What's the most common sports-related injury?
The most common sports injury is a sprained ankle. The next most common is an injury to the knee. This can range from a relatively minor ligament sprain to the more serious torn cartilage, and the still more serious torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL).
Are you an athlete? What sports do you participate in?
I am an ex-high school team athlete and I manage to play basketball once in awhile. I ski during the winter and try to stay in shape with regular exercise three times a week: running, push-ups and sit-ups. People should exercise-it's really the best medicine. It also keeps me employed. Though I am a physician, I do not play golf.
What question do you wish I had asked, and how would you have answered it?
I wish you would have asked what else does University Sports Medicine do besides treat patients with sports and work injuries? I would have answered by saying that we do a great deal of teaching to UB medical students and the physicians-in-training at UB, that we are a unit within the University at Buffalo Department of Orthopaedics and as such we have access to the most expert orthopaedic physicians in the area, that we are involved in academic research activities, that we accommodate high school interns who are interested in sports medicine, that our large staff of athletic trainers works with many of the high schools in Western New York to keep their athletes playing, and that we have a really nice group of people working here.