Orthopedist uses technology to help improve patients' lives

Dr. Bright McConnell, 58, an orthopedist who also specializes in age management and sports performance at FitMed Partners and Charleston Sports Medicine, said he treats all his patients like athletes.

And he's had lots of practice.

McConnell served as the College of Charleston team physician from 1985 until 2003. He worked with athletes in the training room helping to heal injuries and prevent new ones. In his Daniel Island clinic, McConnell has a few more tools.

Technology in injury treatment has made great strides since McConnell's locker room days, he said.

McConnell uses a plasma therapy process called PRP in which a patient's plasma is extracted from their blood and injected around a new or old injury such as tendinitis. The process can jump-start healing, sometimes avoiding invasive surgery, he said.

He also can make use of scanners that tell him a patient's bone density, body mass index and where his or her weight is distributed.

Ultrasound imaging allows McConnell to better target medication. Previously, doctors might touch a knee or elbow, ask where it hurt most and jab a needle in, he said.

In the past four years, McConnell added to his bone-and-joint duties, opening an affiliated practice called FitMed Partners under the same roof.

There, he offers age and fitness management, prescribing a regimen that might include exercise, vitamins and bioidentical hormone therapy.

McConnell said some people may wonder why an orthopedist uses hormone therapies. He became interested in the subject while studying stress fractures in female college athletes in the 1990s.

Hormone levels affect bone density in the young and old. The body produces reduced levels of hormones as it ages, one of the contributing factors in heart disease in men and women.

Benefits of hormone therapies are debatable, but McConnell said evidence has shown that some treatments can work for some patients.

People refer to the treatments as anti-aging, but McConnell calls it age management.

He tells his patients, "There is no pause button on the video of life," he said. You can't prevent the onset of aging, "But you can slow it down."

Reach Jessica Miller at 937-5921.