In Steamboat Springs, with a population that constantly seeks its next adrenaline-pumping activity, access to expert sports-medicine care is essential for the community.
Sports medicine is a subspecialty within orthopaedic surgery. While all orthopaedic surgeons can — and do — treat sports-related injuries, sports-medicine specialists are uniquely trained to understand these types of injuries and how to care for them in the most minimally invasive ways.
At Steamboat Orthopaedic and Spine Institute (SOSI), there are five surgeons who are fellowship-trained in sports medicine: Drs. Alex Meininger, Andreas Sauerbrey, Bryan Bomberg, Adam Wilson and Alejandro Miranda. Dr. Michael Sisk also targets much of his practice toward sports medicine and has been practicing the subspecialty in Steamboat since 1999.
The experience of SOSI’s surgeons includes an impressive list of sports affiliations. Specifically, those surgeons have provided direct orthopaedic care for teams and athletes in the National Football League, National Hockey League, Olympics, U.S. Ski and Snowboard Team, Women’s National Basketball Association, National Collegiate Athletic Association, Major League Soccer, competitive cycling and many more.
Dr. Bryan Bomberg, who was head of the Nordic Combined physician pool at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City in 2002, said it’s important for orthopaedic sports-medicine specialists to learn about the sports in which their patients participate in order to better understand their injuries.
“You have to know the rhythm of the sport. Each one is unique — the professional football guys often have different problems than the college guys,” he said.
For Dr. Meininger, a competitive cyclist and avid skier, working as a sports-medicine specialist offer him the chance to relate and interact with his patients in and out of the office.
The Steamboat Orthopaedic & Spine Institute comprises a dedicated, local, and highly-trained staff of ten physicians and dozens of medical care and support staff, bringing world-class medicine to northwest Colorado, southern Wyoming, and the surrounding region. Alongside the team of specialists, SOSI also has a physical medicine and rehabilitation specialist and a physiatrist who specializes in the evaluation of spinal and musculoskeletal disorders, non-operative spine care, including epidural injections, and EMG and global orthopaedic assessments.
