Dennis Wenger & the Ligamentum Teres Transfer

This week, I speak with Dennis Wenger, the director of pediatric orthopedic surgery education emeritus at Rady Children's Hospital in San Diego, CA, and the professor of orthopedic surgery emeritus at the University of California, San Diego. He has had a prolific career as a clinician educator and researcher in pediatric orthopedic surgery. We discuss his approach to treating developmental dislocation of the hip, including different philosophies he learned from diverse parts of the world with a unique background.  We talk about the state of specialized surgery of the musculoskeletal system in children in the United States.  One of the highlights of our conversation was debating the technique he developed, which involves shortening and reattaching the ligamentum teres, and we talked about its inception, development, biomechanics, and clinical results.  We discuss a few alternatives, including a temporary transarticular pin and the importance of achieving stable concentric reduction.  Of course, no conversation with Dennis Wenger would be complete without some intriguing philosophical insights.   We talk about the difficulties with learning to perform these procedures given the, fortunately, decreasing number of late detected dislocations around the world, among other things.