PATIENTS IN THE NEWS
Lindsey Vonn: On a Mission to Conquer the World
By Jim Brown
Lindsey Vonn, professional skier and a former Steadman-Hawkins patient, has a global view of things. As in Lindsey Vonn, Olympian, winner of two World Cup overall titles, four World Championship medals, two-time gold medalist already in 2009, and winner of a World Super G title. And that’s just the short list.
At 24, Lindsey has been called the most successful American skier in history, but thanks to her great talent, competitive nature, and cutting edge surgical techniques developed at the Steadman-Hawkins Research Foundation, she wants more and is likely to get it.
When your day job is to fly down the side of a mountain on skis at 60 miles per hour without a trapeze artist’s safety net or a NASCAR roll bar, getting health insurance can be a challenge. A sprained knee here, another knee injury there, a busted hip, and a severed tendon in her hand can make for high premiums or high deductibles — take your pick. At one point, Lindsey had to ski with her hand duct-taped to her ski pole (one of the few high-tech procedures not developed or refined at Steadman-Hawkins) because she couldn’t grip it tight enough without help.
Super G Crash in Austria
Downhill skiers know about injuries, so when Lindsey fell — make that crashed — during a 2006 Super G training run in Austria, she knew something bad had happened. “I was going real fast and something caught the edge of my ski. I did a few somersaults and hit my left knee ‘kind of funny’,” she recalls. “I knew it was bad right away.”
She had considerable pain, swelling, bruising, and a MRI that showed a probable small fracture. The first race of the season was coming up, so she took a week off and kept skiing. That’s what skiers do, and Lindsey kept doing it for the next few months.
“Toward the end of the season, I went to Vail to see Steadman-Hawkins orthopaedic surgeon, Dr. William Sterett,” says Lindsey. “I had suffered an injury to my other knee when I was 14, and he was my doctor then. He found cartilage damage and recommended surgery.”
The procedure performed by Dr. Sterett is called “The Package,” which is a series of arthroscopic procedures conducted during one operation designed to treat pre-arthritic and arthritic patients and to preserve joints. It was invented by Dr. Richard Steadman and has been validated through research at the Foundation.
“In the American and international skiing communities,” says Lindsey, “it’s just known that Steadman-Hawkins is the place to go if you have a knee injury. That’s where my mom took me when I was a kid. Dr. Sterett took good care of me then and he’s been my doctor ever since. He’s the best around and he’s my guy. I trust him.”
“The surgery didn’t take long,” she says. “When I woke up, I felt like a million dollars — like I had been sleeping a several days. My husband, a nurse, and the anesthesiologist were there right after the operation, and Dr. Sterett came in shortly to check on me.”
Lindsey recalls that, at first, the rehab program was tough. “The knee was swollen and moving it through a range of motion was difficult. I did rehab at the Howard Head facility three-four hours a day, then continued icing my knee and doing exercises at home. (Lindsey now owns a home near Park City, Utah.) When they repair cartilage, you have to give it time to heal. If not, you could have even more damage.”
The Steadman-Hawkins Experience
“The whole procedure and rehab program worked out great. I got stronger each week. By the time I got back on the snow, it felt great. No pain and I haven’t had any problems since. I’m 100 percent back. Even the three small scars have faded away. The procedures performed by Dr. Sterett allowed me to continue doing what I do, and now I have healthy knees.”
“I’ve been in other hospitals, but in my opinion, none of them take care of you like they do at Steadman-Hawkins,” says Lindsey. “And not just because I am a skier. I actually like to go back and visit with the staff. My surgery was easy because everyone made me feel so comfortable. That’s not normal.”
“Somewhere else they might have told me told me to either deal with the pain or stop skiing,” says Lindsey. “But because of the research conducted at the Foundation and the expertise of Dr. Sterett, I can do whatever I want to do.”
What she wants to do now is to conquer the skiing world. Watch for her when World Cup competition starts this fall and in the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver. Lindsey Vonn may become one of the most famous Steadman-Hawkins ‘Patient in the News’ ever.
