Worcester sports medicine specialist talks treating stars
Over the course of his medical career, Dr. Michael A. Brown has treated college athletes, local semi-professional sports teams and even the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings. But most of the patients he deals with on a regular basis are everyday people who are trying to feel better so they can return to their normal lives. Brown, a Long Island native, has worked in the orthopedic department at UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester for 15 years, treating mostly knee and shoulder injuries in the sports medicine practice. He received his medical degree from Georgetown University School of Medicine.
Q: How did you become interested in sports medicine?
A: I have a brother who’s an orthopedic surgeon, and he’s a little older than me, so I think that sparked my interest. Sports medicine, I think I chose because I was an athlete, and I like dealing with athletes, and people. I want to get people back to an activity or a sport that they have a goal to get back to.
Q: What sports teams have you worked with?
A: In Cleveland [as a resident], we worked with the professional teams in high schools. All the residents took care of local high schools, and some of the colleges in Cleveland. And then in Minnesota for my fellowship, we dealt with the high school athlete, the college athlete, then I also got to work with the Minnesota Vikings and the Twins and the Timberwolves. That was exciting. When I came here, I helped work with some of the minor league baseball teams, the Lowell Spinners, and the Pawtucket Red Sox. We also dealt with professional hockey when it was in Worcester. I was also the head doctor for the Lowell Devils when they were in Lowell before they shipped out to Albany. Now we’re trying to get involved with the new hockey team that’s going to be coming to Worcester.
Q: How has the opioid crisis changed what you do?
A: The places I trained didn’t dispense a lot of narcotics, so that’s kind of how I’ve always been. I think that’s obviously a problem in our society now, especially in Massachusetts and the Northeast. It hasn’t really affected how I dispense medications, but I see a lot more people requesting narcotics than I used to. And it’s a tough conversation. People want to be pain-free, and people think of narcotics as the thing that’s going to do that -- the only thing that’s going to do that -- whereas there are a lot of treatments as an orthopedic surgeon I’d rather attempt before narcotics.
Q: Do you do any alternative pain-relief therapies?
A: There are patients who say, ‘I’ve seen a chiropractor’ or an acupuncturist and I’m really all for that, I don’t have any real negative biases towards alternative medicine, Eastern medicine, supplements or things. It’s just I’m not trained in a lot of that, and some it just doesn’t have the firm science behind it, but that’s not to say that people don’t do great with some of these treatments.
Q: How has technology shaped what you do over the years?
A: One big thing that has evolved is arthroscopic instrumentation, and implants that we put in people’s bodies to fix things. (These have) evolved tremendously, and made some procedures, especially around the shoulders, a lot easier. It’s opened up a lot more surgeons to doing things around the shoulders, especially.
Q: What's your favorite part about what you do?
A: I think my favorite part is seeing a difference I make in some people’s lives. Seeing people come in frustrated, unhappy and in pain and doing an operation and treating them and after the recovery period, having them come back really happy and thankful and appreciative. They tell me that they can do things that they haven’t been able to do for years, and that’s very satisfying. Patients bring in pictures of what they’re doing and write something on it, and that’s always very rewarding. It makes me feel good.
This interview was conducted and edited for length
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