On March 9, Dr. Bernie Bach, 65, of River Forest was inducted into the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine Hall of Fame, making him one of 55 honorees.
He delivered the John C. Kennedy lectureship to society members in early March and received AOSSM’s Mr. Sports Medicine Award in July 2017. In the mid-1980s, he pioneered the sports medicine program at Midwest Orthopaedics at Rush. Bach, the chair of orthopedic surgery and professor of orthopaedic surgery at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, answered a few questions for the Oak Leaves on March 18.
Q: What have these recent honors meant to you?
A: I was thrilled and honored and humbled. These are incredibly special awards. They don’t come to everyone. I guess they represent a lengthy career and a respect your colleagues have for you. At the beginning of my career, I never would have imagined this. You don’t get to these positions without the help of others. It’s shared by my partners and those individuals who were mentors for me when I was growing up.
Q: How did you come to work in sports medicine and orthopedics?
A: It’s interesting. I was being recruited for three different sports in high school. I tore up my knee the year before senior season. I tore the ACL and MCL in my left knee and needed surgery. … I think basically that turned the lightbulb on. I thought, maybe I’ll be a sports medicine knee surgeon. And that happens to a lot of the kids we take care of. In college, I worked with Harvard University team doctors and did my senior thesis on achilles tendon ruptures. I went on to medical school, all along focusing on orthopedic surgery and sports medicine. Our profession is not death and dying; it’s life and living, and keeping people active and functioning.
Q: Where do you see orthopedics in the years to come?
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A: Orthopedics is a wonderful aspect of medicine. You do improve people’s function. With a knee or hip replacement, your quality of life is improved. We’re keeping people moving. You see all these older individuals who are active and moving. There have been so many technological improvements and progress. When I was in high school and college, hospital stays were three to seven days and involved long leg casts. For the last 25 years, we’ve done them all as outpatient procedures. We’ve accelerated rehabilitation progress, and people are seeing far better results and much more predictable outcomes. I think we’ll continue to see significant progress, and what might be acceptable today as a successful intervention may be dramatically different in 10 to 15 years.