Practicing with Dr. Stonecipher at West Tennessee Bone & Joint Clinic are Dr. Michael Cobb, Dr. David Johnson, Dr. Kelly Pucek, Dr. Trey Antwine, Dr. David Pearce, Dr. John Everett, Dr. Jason Hutchison and Dr. Adam Smith.
The clinic, at 24 Physicians Drive, specializes in comprehensive orthopedic care. Clinic physicians diagnose and treat diseases and injuries of the bone, muscles, tendons, nerves and ligaments in adults and children. For an appointment, call 731.661.9825 or 888.776.7837.
Other stories with our doctors
'One of the most caring, most patient physicians'
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| Dr. Lowell Stonecipher examines Trisha Pearson. |
“I’ve been his patient since the late 1970s,” says the retired Madison County educator. “He is one of the most caring, most patient physicians I’ve come across. I wouldn’t consider changing doctors. I told him he had to last as long as I did.”
Dr. Stonecipher, a board certified orthopedic surgeon, has been mending broken bones, repairing damaged ligaments and tendons, and treating other orthopedic problems for more than 30 years. It was the summer of 1973 when he opened West Tennessee Bone & Joint Clinic in the hopes that he could make a living with his own practice.
“By December,” he says, “I had seen more patients in six months than I hoped to have in the first year.”
The practice has grown ever since as more patients sought him out and as other physicians joined the clinic. “My whole plan in starting the clinic,” he says, “was to take a new partner every five years.” Today, seven other physicians work with Dr. Stonecipher at West Tennessee Bone & Joint.
Though the types of problems he sees today are the same he saw 30 years ago, how he treats them has changed dramatically.
For example, consider a torn meniscus in the knee. Fixing it used to require open surgery. “You made an incision and you took out the entire meniscus,” Dr. Stonecipher says. The patient stayed several days in the hospital. The knee was immobilized for two weeks until the sutures were removed. The patient was off work about a month.
Today, with less-invasive arthroscopic surgery, only the torn part is removed with a surgery that requires three small incisions – one incision for a scope so the surgeon can see inside the knee, one incision for the surgical instruments, and one incision to drain saline that is used to expand the joint. Surgery is done on an outpatient basis. The patient goes home the same day and is moving the knee almost immediately. Depending on the type of job, the patient can be back to work in a few days.
Not only is recovery faster with arthroscopic surgery, Dr. Stonecipher says, the surgery is more precise because the scope allows him to evaluate the whole knee and not just see the part of the knee where the large incision was made.
In 1979, Dr. Stonecipher was the first to do the less invasive, arthroscopic surgery in Jackson. On several occasions, he has trained with a specialist in a new procedure so he could bring that skill back to the community.
Besides the changes in surgery, Dr. Stonecipher has seen other changes in the practice of orthopedics. More awareness of repetitive motion injuries, for example, has led to an increase in the diagnosis of such problems as carpal tunnel syndrome. Another example has been the improvement in implant materials used for hip and other joint replacements, he says.
Day in and day out, Dr. Stonecipher continues to enjoy both the surgical and the office part of his practice. “I like what I do,” he says. “If you enjoy what you do, treat your patients well, and get good results from your surgical and office practice, you don’t have to worry about making a living.”
Many of his patients, he adds, have “thick charts,” representing the number of times they have come back to him for care.
Riddle is one of them. Over the years, Dr. Stonecipher has removed a herniated disk in her back, repaired a pulled ligament in her knee, repaired a trigger thumb, fixed a rotator cuff in the right shoulder, and mended a broken left shoulder.
Each time, she said, she went into the surgery prepared because Dr. Stonecipher took the time to explain what would happen.
“He’s been awfully nice to me,” Riddle says. “One of my friends told me that if Dr. Stonecipher recommended having my head cut off, I’d say ‘go to it.’ That’s how much faith I have in him.”