Traveling Fellowships: Vacation or Learning Experience??

What was the what were one or two of the most surprising things that you saw that felt very different from how medicine is practiced in the US? So I

think the biggest thing was there wasn't a lot that like looking at it.

Everything we saw, I think, is very familiar.

And there are some subtle differences.

But even with those, you're kind of looking at them like, oh, I see what you're doing.

And that seems like a nice way to do it, totally reasonable.

and i would think that they would look the same at our practice that even if there are some differences it's like oh yeah like that makes sense um like i understand the literature that would support that decision instead of the one that i'm making but um so kurt spindler was we had a godfather on our trip a senior surgeon and he had actually done the same fellowship 30 years before And he said 30 years ago, it did feel very different, but he was surprised also at how basically like the practice was pretty similar between what we're doing here and what we're doing there.

And so I thought that was kind of reassuring to see and good to see.

And then in talking about ideas I think that we're basing decisions on kind of the same group of evidence and literature.

It's not like we're operating in different spheres and approaching things differently.

And yeah, so like pretty familiar feeling for how a lot of things were done.

All right.

I have a follow-up question because a couple weeks ago, we did a podcast on stem cells and biologics.

And a lot of patients will go through the, you know, I think we've all had this conversation where it's like, okay, these are the non-operative options.

These are the operative options.

And then kind of at the end, well, what about stem cells? Well, we don't really do them.

And then they say, why? Well, they're not really stem cell therapies.

Also, they're not efficacious.

And it's like, well, what about athletes that go to Europe? Was there a lot of discussion about different stem cell therapies, how they're being used? Or is this really a niche type thing, even in Europe?

I think the latter.

Really a niche thing even there.

And we spoke about that with a few of the people at the different centers.

And their views on that were very similar to ours, where we really don't have the evidence.

We're not doing it in our practice.

And we hear about it also, but it's not something that's at the forefront of what they're doing, which I thought was really interesting too.