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COLLIERVILLE — With the songs of Hannah Montana drowning out the sound of her cast-cutting saw, it’s a playful spirit Dr. Susan Austin employs in alleviating her patients’ anxiety.

“It’s a real happy interaction,” she says of her relationship with the children she treats. “We try to examine them by playing with them, and we use techniques of distraction if they get scared.”

It was Austin’s desire to work with children that drew her to a career in pediatric orthopedics and continues to drive her dream for the future.

In the coming year, she plans to open a new pediatric orthopedic practice that specializes in kids who have orthopedic problems and developmental disabilities. Her plan for the practice includes bringing in a physical therapist, speech therapist and occupational therapist all specializing in children, as well as a massage therapist and eventually someone to perform developmental screenings.

“We want to enhance the number of resources available to children and families in the Memphis area,” she said.

Currently, Austin is practicing at Collierville Orthopedics and Sports Medicine after spending 10 years at OrthoMemphis. She holds a medical degree from the University of Tennessee, and completed her orthopedic training at The Campbell Clinic in 1994. She then spent a one-year fellowship in pediatric orthopedics at the Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children in Dallas. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons and American Academy of Pediatrics.

Austin had originally planned to be a pediatrician, but during medical school honed in on orthopedic surgery as a way to tap the biomedical engineering background she had gained as a student at Vanderbilt University.

Her interest in caring for children was encouraged by pediatrics professor Dr. Hershel P. “Pat” Wall, a friend of Austin’s family, now serving as interim chancellor of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center.

“He got me interested in taking care of children,” Austin said. “He talked about the noble nature of taking care of kids, in that they have problems but they really don’t have a voice in society. It’s up to us as adults to give them that voice.”

Austin is seeking to live out that mission by continuing to add new methods and technologies to her practice. Recently, she has learned and begun using a new technique for the three-dimensional correction of spinal deformities in children. Made by Biomet ®, the system helps with rib deformities children have as a result of the curvature of the spine in scoliosis, using pedicle screws placed from the back to the front of the spine in order to derotate the ribs.

“This helps the ribs appear to go into more of a normal formation, and also allows you to fuse a fewer number of levels so that the back is not as stiff,” Austin said.

In addition to both surgical and nonsurgical treatments for spinal conditions, Austin also spends much of her practice caring for the breaks and sprains that come hand-in-hand with kids’ active nature. But while kids can tend to hurt themselves more than adults, there’s a lot to be said for a growing body’s ability to heal.

“Kids are always falling off of something so there are lots of traumas,” Austin said. “But the most enjoyable thing about this practice is that kids in general tend to get better quicker.

“They heal faster and they tend to not develop the joint stiffness that adults do after they have an injury. If you put an adult in a cast for six weeks, they almost can’t move, but with a child it’s like nothing ever happened.”

The changing nature of a child’s body as it continues to grow can both complicate orthopedic conditions and make those same conditions easier to fix — with the right planning and intervention. In recent years, the rising prevalence of childhood obesity has had Austin working to correct the growth and development of patients’ legs and hips which are not yet mature enough to carry extra weight.

One of her most common procedures is fixing a slipped epiphysis in the hip caused by the extra pressure of added weight. She also commonly uses a new plate system to correct knock-kneed or bow-legged conditions that occur in overweight kids.

“It manipulates the growth plate so that the leg grows into a straighter position,” she said. “You’re just utilizing all that growth capacity and potential for healing.”

Those aspects of her patients also make for a more conservative orthopedic practice, in that surgery is less often necessary than with adult patients because of kids’ potential to grow and heal.

“The care of children is different from the care of adults,” she said. “It’s important they receive specialized care — especially in orthopedics — by people who are trained to take care of kids.”

At home, Austin has one child of her own, Christopher, 8. In addition to spending time with him, she also enjoys collecting antiques and buying and selling thoroughbred racing horses.

She’s been in the commercial racing business for about seven years now, but has had an interest in it ever since she was a young girl and accompanied her uncle to watch his horse compete in the Kentucky Derby. Her collection today includes 13 retired racing horses she keeps at her home, as well as a dozen more in Kentucky, two of which are active race horses.



October 2007

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