CURVEBEAM CONNECT: South American Orthopedics is Making Strides with Dr. Cristian Ortiz

The foot & ankle orthopedic specialty in South America is burgeoning as the number of foot and ankle surgeons continues to increase, said Dr. Cristian Ortiz of the Clinica Universidad de los Andes in Santiago, Chile.

Click here to download the executive summary for this episode of CurveBeam Connect, featuring Dr. Cristian Ortiz of the Clinica Universidad de los Andes.

“We are growing up in sports, but we’re also growing up in the practice of all the different areas of medicine and medical care, and especially in orthopedic,” Dr. Ortiz said.

For this month’s episode of CurveBeam Connect, director of marketing Vinti Singh sat down with Dr. Ortiz, a noted foot and ankle orthopedic surgeon and vice president of the International Federation of Foot and Ankle Societies (IFFAS). Every month, Singh interviews doctors, patients, and thought leaders in healthcare technology to discuss how weight bearing CT solutions are changing medicine.

In the last five years, Ortiz said he has seen a growing number of foot and ankle surgeons, especially in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Colombia.

“Right now in Chile, we have 60 foot and ankle surgeons who are well-trained or formally trained in the States or Europe,” Dr. Ortiz said. “So it’s a pretty good number for an 18-million-people country.”

More orthopedic surgeons mean an improved level of care and skill for the specialty, he said.

“Medicine is practiced in different ways depending on where you are, which depends on your financial support, level of expertise, and sometimes even if you have the same training, people do things differently,” Dr. Ortiz said.

Dr. Ortiz is preparing for the next meeting of the IFFAS 2020 in Vina del Mar, Chile, where 1,400 surgeons will meet to discuss weight-bearing CT, sports injuries, total ankle replacements, and other hot topics right now in the foot and ankle surgery.

“So it’s very interesting because when you bring speakers talking about the same subjects, you get different ideas because they come from different parts of the world,” Dr. Ortiz said.