Dr. David Backstein makes top doctors lists
Dr. David Backstein, head of Orthopaedic Surgery at Mount Sinai Hospital recently received two recognitions by the medical community in Canada and the US. He was named amongst his colleagues as one of the top 22 orthopedic knee surgeons in North America, in a list which was published in the well-read industry publication, Orthopedics This Week. Dr. Backstein’s accomplishments and leadership in the field was also recently celebrated locally by Toronto Life magazine whose editorial team asked nearly 1,000 Toronto doctors to nominate the City's best practitioners in different specialties. As a result Dr. Backstein is profiled as the best doctor in Toronto for knee surgery.
Dr. David Backstein, Head of the Division of Orthopaedic Surgery at Mount Sinai Hospital and the Medical and Lead Chair at the Mount Sinai Centre for Musculoskeletal Disease, was recently rated as one of the top knee surgeons in North America.
The desire to make a prosthetic joint work like a normal joint is what drives his highly rated work. “He does a terrific job as head of the division. He is very talented when it comes to complex knee construction and revision; he has been instrumental in the development of the porous metal implants that we use for revision and guidance systems. He has distinguished himself as a great educator because he breaks complicated concepts down to the fundamentals,” says a statement by Orthopedics This Week.
The most challenging surgical cases that Dr. Backstein is known for are revision knee replacements, where patients who have already undergone a knee replacement, for any of a number of reasons, need to have the prosthetic replaced. He performs a few of these complex surgeries a week at Mount Sinai, which has now become one of Canada’s leading referral centres for complex hip and knee reconstruction surgeries.
With an aging population and increased expectations of older and middle aged patients wanting a quality of life similar to that of their youth, the need for prosthetic knee and hips is rising. To prepare for this increased demand, Dr. Backstein has promoted a model of care that allows more efficient use of operative time, more rapid mobilization and discharge, and well as physiotherapy for patients leading up to and following surgery. As a result of this innovative model Dr. Backstein’s department at Mount Sinai operates on 700 cases a year with a higher ratio of revision to first-time surgery than any other hospital in Ontario. Mount Sinai has also been recognized by the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care for having the lowest wait times for knee replacement surgery in Ontario.
When Dr. Backstein is not performing surgery he is a passionate educator, committed to pushing the boundaries of knowledge and surgical skills to trainees and observers eager to learn from him. He is an associate professor at the University of Toronto and former director of the undergraduate surgical education program (2004-2011). Dr. Backstein was also a fortunate learner himself, mentored by Mount Sinai’s Dr. Allan Gross, whose surgical expertise was made famous by performing Canada’s first knee-joint transplant in 1972. Since then, thanks to ambitious doctors like Dr. Backstein, Mount Sinai has grown into a power hub of world-renowned experts in orthopaedic surgery.
