Brothers Revolutionize Sports Medicine, Rehab

Physical therapy is a pain.

But it doesn’t have to be a pain in the neck.

Drs. Chris and John Dougherty of The Agility Center in Bentonville are making sure of that.

The fellowship-trained brothers from Missouri have brought cutting edge methods to Northwest Arkansas and their efforts have benefited everyone from a 13-year-old football player to an 84-year-old golfer.

Orthopedics is big business and one the aging “Baby Boomer” generation and more than 7 million high school athletes make one of the fastest growing segments of the medical field with a 15 percent annual growth rate and revenue of $25.1 billion in 2006.

Sports medicine represented $2 billion of that segment in 2005, according to HealthpointCapital Partners LP, a private equity firm that tracks the orthopedic and dental industries.

Chris Dougherty arrived in Bentonville from St. Louis 18 months ago and John Dougherty joined him from Joplin in December. Chris Dougherty’s practice now sees 35 to 40 patients a day.

“This is a very good market for business growth,” Chris Dougherty said. “The population projection show at least another 400,000 to 500,000 customers over the next 10 to 15 years. It only makes sense to try to position yourself in a market like that.”

Ranked No. 1 in orthopedic surgery in Northwest Arkansas by HealthGrades.com, The Agility Center also has received approval for the state’s first sports medicine fellowship.

Chris Dougherty will train two new orthopedic surgeons in the coming year and John Dougherty will train four primary care practitioners.

The Agility Center is now doing 40 to 50 surgeries per month and even has two patients flying in from Idaho to have Chris Dougherty perform his revolutionary arthroscopic hip grafting procedure that can alleviate pain without the arduous process of joint replacement.

“We are starting to gain a national presence,” John Dougherty said.

Not every injury the Doughertys treat is sports-related in origin, but their goal is to treat everyone like a star athlete. Chris Dougherty has two clients on NFL rosters this season and knows what that requires.

“If you’ve ever dealt with a pro athlete, you know they have little patience,” Chris Dougherty said. “They don’t care that I’m a physician because there are four other guys waiting to fix him that want to as much as I would like to. So you have to develop a sense they are a customer.”

From designing ways to treat “swimmer’s shoulder” to figuring out how to add distance to your tee shot while in the pool, the Doughertys have designed sport-specific therapy.

“What we’re trying to bring is a different kind of sports medicine,” Chris Dougherty said. “We are used to taking care of professional athletes and that’s what we bring here. Everyone is treated like a pro.”

Cutting Edge

Chris Dougherty is the only surgeon in the area who performs Tommy John’s surgery, the elbow repair procedure named for the Major League pitcher whose career it resurrected.

He hasn’t done every one on pitchers, though. Chris Dougherty has performed it on a waitress who injured herself on the job and for a bass player in a church band.

Their job is the same as a sport, and getting them back on the “field” as quickly as possible is the goal.

Chris Dougherty said he’s the first surgeon he’s known of in the world to perfect the hip grafting procedure.

By resurfacing the hip or by repairing torn tendons, he has helped patients who were either misdiagnosed with arthritis or told they would have to live with the pain until they were a proper age to receive a hip replacement.

Joint replacements typically last 15 to 20 years, meaning patients deciding on the surgery are essentially betting on whether they’ll outlive their new hip.

“One patient was 84 who couldn’t take the pain anymore,” Chris Dougherty said. “He’d had a diagnosis of arthritis for four years and it was actually a tendon tear. Eight weeks after surgery he was back playing golf again.”

The pair’s most recent breakthrough is a clavicle nail that could transform a broken collarbone from a season-ending injury to less worrisome than a pulled hamstring.

Four companies in the $17 billion orthopedic implant industry are interested in mass production of the clavicle nail – a rod inserted through the bone – for which the Doughertys have patent applications pending.

The first trial of the product was a patient who had a motorcycle accident and he was back “doing stuff he shouldn’t have done” in a week, John Dougherty said.

The University of Oklahoma would have been interested in the product last year when star tailback Adrian Peterson went down with a broken collarbone last October and missed the Sooners’ final six games of the regular season.

The Doughertys got a chance to save an athlete’s season locally this summer. They inserted the clavicle nail into a 13-year-old Bentonville receiver who broke his collarbone in a fall off a scooter.

Six days after the surgery, the patient participated in a passing camp with no pain or limitations. After two weeks he was allowed to dress out with strict “no contact” rules and after a month was taking thumps at a football camp.

Compare that to the usual 6 to 8 weeks in a sling in the past and it’s clear they’re on to something.

The rod came out after eight weeks and, “it looks like it never broke,” John Dougherty said.

Think Like an Athlete

Chris and John Dougherty both played college football, Chris at the University of Missouri and John at Culver Stockton College, a Division III school in Canton, Mo.

“We probably spent as much time in rehab as we did in medical school,” John Dougherty said.

Chris Dougherty’s career ended after two years in 1990 when he tore up his knee and John Dougherty had a separated shoulder and torn ligaments in his wrist while playing from 1985-88.

Sports medicine wasn’t nearly as advanced then, and many doctors followed the same paths as the Doughertys by moving from the playing surface to the medical field.

“All the hours in tedious rehab, we try to develop programs that are fun,” John Dougherty said. “You get better participation and compliance with it. You can get really bored really fast.”

Thinking along these lines to help a “bummed out” golfer who was facing weeks away from the links, the Doughertys discovered an aquatic golf therapy that doubles as swing practice.

The brothers found that if the swing is executed properly in the pool, the golfer won’t lose his or her balance. But if they raise the head or drop a shoulder, they’ll tip backward.

 “It forces you to have the right technique and come around appropriately,” Chris Dougherty said. “It does help cut down on mistakes. If you do the exact correct, you just glide through the water.”

Some of their clients from Bella Vista have realized after a couple sessions they can practice this in their own pool rather than return to The Agility Center.

That’s fine by the Doughertys.

“If your athlete is on the field and not in my operating room,” Chris Dougherty said, “then I’ve done just as good.”