Doctors Share Their Views On A Guy Who Isn’t Their Patient

There’s a fairly common phenomenon in sports medicine relating to high-profile injuries. Whenever a big-name guy has a boo-boo, doctors who aren’t treating the player in question inject their views into the discussion, if for no reason other than to get their names into print. Three of them have opted to sound off regarding Brett Favre’s biceps/shoulder/arm problem. Two spoke recently to Albert Breer of Sporting News, and one spoke to Sean Jensen of the St. Paul Pioneer Press. (Before we go any farther with this, we need to be clear about the targets of our looming criticism. Writers who elicit the opinions are merely doing their jobs. And so now we’ll remain on Breer’s and Jensen’s Festivus card lists. . . . Maybe we should have criticized them, after all.) Dr. Neal ElAttrache, whose surgical procedure on Pats quarterback Tom Brady potentially resulted in the introduction of an infection into the quarterback’s knee, and Dr. Lonnie Paulos, who essentially claimed several years ago that he successfully designed and attached a bionic leg to Bengals quarterback Carson Palmer, popped off roughly ten days ago, and they said that Favre should be able to play with the condition that, you know, neither of them has actually studied or diagnosed. Dr. David Altchek offered similar views to Jensen for today’s edition of the Pioneer Press. While this isn’t quite the same thing as Bill Frist opining on Terri Schiavo’s condition via the inspection of a videotape, there’s still something about all of this that doesn’t sit well with us. None of these doctors know what’s going on in Favre’s arm. So why are they saying anything? Moving forward, here’s the standard opening answer any doctor should provide when contacted be one of us writer types: “Well, [insert name of high-profile player] isn’t a patient of mine, so I don’t know anything about his current condition or his medical history. As a result, I’m not comfortable speculating about things that fall within the purview of one of my colleagues in this profession. I trust that [insert name of high-profile player] will seek and obtain competent medical advice, and I trust that [insert name of high-profile player] will make good decisions about his own care, as determined by the interests of himself and his family.” Of course, we haven’t been hired by any of these doctors to provide P.R. services. So we’d better practice what we preach and just shut up about it.