Sports Medicine

What is sports medicine?

Sports medicine focuses on athletic performance with an emphasis on treating your current issues as well as helping prevent future sports injuries. Meant for individuals interested in discovering or maintaining the benefits of an active lifestyle, Dr. Cunningham’s sports medicine program is structured for all levels of athletic ability.

He has extensive experience in working with professional athletes, including the Dallas Cowboys and US Olympic Ski team. However, he’s just as focused on helping “weekend warriors” overcome the challenges of the shoulder, knee, and other common sports injuries.

What does a sports medicine doctor treat?

With special expertise in knee and shoulder injuries, Dr. Cunningham offers the latest treatments for joint, ligament, and cartilage problems, as well as:

• Sprains and strains, muscle injuries, tendonitis
• Hip, elbow, and ankle problems
• Specialized experience with skiing injuries
• Treatment for most conditions, but excluding back and neck

Although he’s well-known for his expertise as an orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Cunningham always considers nonsurgical and therapy/injectable modalities prior to making any surgical recommendations.

Dr. Cunningham is an avid researcher who studies and trains in the latest, most innovative treatment protocols available for his patients. He’s especially focused on providing the most effective techniques in the rapidly-changing field of sports medicine and has a wealth of knowledge and experience in the evolving area of orthobiologics.

What are orthobiologics?

Sports medicine specialists use orthobiologics to help your injuries heal more quickly. Continuing advances in biologic therapy allow experts like Dr. Cunningham to use natural substances taken from your own plasma and cellular therapy "stem cells," or donor cartilage grafts, to promote healing in ways not possible in the past.

Depending on your injury, this treatment can now be accomplished with or without surgery and includes therapy such as platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injections. While currently used to repair, replace, or restore damaged cartilage, ligaments, and other tissue structures, the ultimate goal of treatment with orthobiologics is to regenerate tissue and allow the complete return of your joint structure and function.

Orthobiologic treatments are increasingly appropriate for a growing segment of Dr. Cunningham’s sports medicine patients. He is at the forefront of these trends, having served as a medical consultant for two sports medicine companies in product development and use.