Dr. Andreas H. Gomoll, MD

my name is andreas Kemal I'm an orthopedic surgeon in the sports medicine division at HSS and my thing is knee surgery and joint preservation most of them patients who come see me have knee or shoulder injuries they might be sports related in terms of they had an acute injury while playing sports sometimes it's just an over the years damage has accumulated so it's not one traumatic event but it's sort of been bugging them for years I also need to know what your expectations are what does your life look like what do you do for work what you do for hobbies that really has a surprisingly large impact on the treatment decisions when we treat with feeding problems surgically we can either do what's called keyhole surgery is so arthroscopic surgery where just make tiny little holes a look inside with a fiber-optic camera and then we can with tiny instruments oftentimes fix things without big incisions there's some problems that need bigger answers and for those who do what's called an open surgery where we make an incision so that it can get in and replace part of your knee joint not necessarily with metal and plastic but sometimes with biologic replacement options so in terms of where can we see each other and historically HSS has been on the Upper East Side Manhattan is a great place but it's not the greatest place if you come in from outside Manhattan so we're trying to make things easier so we have opened several satellites and the satellite I go to is Stamford Connecticut this is a Chelsea pier we have a great rehab center we have imaging and we have physician offices so you can see me here at the main hospital you can see me in Stanford the best thing really at the end of the day if you have a long clinic day and you see a lot of patients but if somebody says you know what I can do things I haven't been able to do for ten years thank you that's the best thing

so I think the most important thing when you're faced with deciding on whether you need to have surgery or not is pick someone that you have a connection with that you can build trust because whenever you have surgery at least for a while you have a relationship with someone the surgeons we always joke we take someone in our family at least temporarily you know if you go see someone and they come into your room and they never let go of the door handle and they just say you need to advance and it disappeared probably not the best doesn't mean that you have to have a three-hour conversation every time at least find someone and you feel you can trust