Stories of the Orthopedic Surgeons at Kishwaukee Community Hospital

We can rebuild a shattered
ankle, replace a worn out
hip and reconstruct a mangled hand. We can replace a disc
or fuse a spine to alleviate debilitating back pain.

We are the orthopedic surgeons at Kishwaukee Community Hospital.

Click the name of the doctor
to visit their profile.

Dr. Russell J. Bodner
Dr. Michele T. Glasgow
Dr. Steven G. Glasgow
Dr. Rajeev K. Jain
Dr. John F. Lacart
Dr. Photine Liakos
Dr. Robert A. Swartz
Dr. Allen U. Van

Two summers ago, Jim promised the Waterman youth baseball program that he would open the season with a sky dive. Unfortunately, a bad landing landed the 49-year-old carpenter in the Emergency Department with a shattered ankle. “His injury was among the worst I have seen, “said Dr. Photine Liakos, orthopedic surgeon and foot and ankle specialist at Midwest Orthopaedic Institute (MOI), Sycamore.

“The impact from the leg bone literally made the ankle joint explode. The ankle was shattered into many pieces. It was a very severe injury,” Dr. Liakos said. Her colleague, Dr. Russell Bodner, was on call that day. In the operating room, he placed an external fixator on Jim’s ankle immobilizing it to buy time for the significant swelling to go down and for the bruised and damaged soft tissue to recover.

Fifteen days later, Dr. Liakos, assisted by Dr. Bodner, performed an open reduction internal fixation on Jim’s ankle, literally “putting all the pieces back in place with plates and screws, like doing a puzzle,” she said.

During the two-hour surgery a tourniquet was applied around the thigh to restrict blood flow to the ankle, making it easier for Dr. Liakos to see all the bone fragments and put them back together. The joint was repaired using absorbable pins, newer technology that stays in the body permanently. With a shattered joint like Jim’s the fragments are repaired progressing from the back of the joint to the front. Holding the pieces together with the absorbable pins allows the small fragments to be fit together but not have hardware get in the way. The pins absorb over the course of 2 years which allows healing to take place with the support of the pins. Plates and screws are then placed on the surface of the bones to hold the larger pieces together.

Recovery from this type of injury usually takes 12-18 months, but Jim was back to work as a carpenter a year later and kept his promise to do a repeat skydiving performance for Waterman baseball in May 2007. “I worked on changing my landing technique and I’m still skydiving,” he says.