Chicago's Top Doctors, Chicago magazine January 2001
In the January 2001 issue of Chicago magazine, the cover story on the city's top doctors included a number of physicians from Children's Memorial Hospital. Pictured on the cover was Dr. John Sarwark from Children's Memorial's department of Pediatric Orthopedics. Scroll down to read more about Dr. Sarwark.
Other physicians listed in the January 2001 article included those that were hospital-based and those that were members of Children's Community Physicians Association.
[Web editor's note: The doctors listed from Children's Memorial Hospital and the other area hospitals were the result of a selection process made independently by Chicago and Castle Connolly, as described here.
"Chicago's list of the area's top doctors was compiled by Castle Connolly Medical Ltd., which publishes regional guides to the nation's outstanding physicians. To prepare our list, Castle Connolly sent surveys to about 12,000 Chicago-area doctors, nurses, and hospital administrators asking them to nominate physicians in various specialties and subspecialties to whom they would send family members." (Chicago, page 72)]
Children's bones may be more resilient than those of adults, but their young psyches are very tender. Along with its physical impact, an injury of a congenital problem can severely damage a child"s self-image and ability to develop. In his work with spine-related disorders, John Sarwark tries to minimize that long-term damage on two fronts: by finding better ways to treat childhood trauma and disease, and by looking for ways to prevent those problems in the first place. Sarwark treats children with scoliosis (curvature of the spine) or spina bifida (an incompletely closed spinal cord), as well as those with more commonplace traumas such as broken bones. Surgery for scoliosis, he says, can be performed in a day now, followed by a hospital stay short as four days (a decade ago it would have taken about four weeks; 30 years ago, it was six to nine months).
Surgery for spina bifida has advanced to the point that children who once would have had a life expectancy of about a year can now plan full, productive adult lives. As for prevention, Sarwark is the medical director of the Center for Childhood Safety at Children's Memorial, which advocates for fire and pedestrian safety and the correct use of car seats. "It's an upstream approach to solving problems," says Sarwark, "rather than just sitting in the ER and taking care of them after the fact." Sarwark also helps other doctors with their patients. He edited Caring for the Child with Spina Bifida, due out this spring from the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons; and on two recent medical missions to Shanghai with a team of doctors from Northwestern University, Sarwark demonstrated the latest techniques in treating scoliosis.
But his dream is to put himself and his colleagues out of business - and recent breakthroughs are encouraging. "Soon we won't need to concentrate on spina bifida because it will be such a rare problem," he says. "People like myself will become historical experts, as some orthopedic surgeons once did for polio."
Article by Dennis Rodkin.
Originally published in Chicago, January 2001