Mount Sinai Orthopedic Surgeons Selected for Prestigious Traveling Fellowships

In October 2024, Mount Sinai’s Paul J. Cagle, Jr., MD, packed his bags and boarded a plane from New York City to Asia, first bound for Japan. Dr. Cagle was one of two orthopedic surgeons selected to participate in the American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons’ prestigious Traveling Fellowship Program, and only the second cohort to date to visit the continent of Asia. He saw it as the opportunity of a lifetime.

“The chance to go to Asia to share and develop new innovative surgical techniques and research ideas was very exhilarating,” says Dr. Cagle, Associate Program Director of Mount Sinai’s Orthopedic Surgery residency program and Associate Professor, Orthopedic Surgery, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “I think there’s still a barrier to exploring some of the incredible ideas and thought processes ongoing in many Asian countries, and if we are going to move medicine forward, we need to be willing to, sometimes literally, go that extra mile.”

Dr. Cagle, along with Meghan Kelly, MD, PhD, is one of two surgeons from the Mount Sinai Department of Orthopedic Surgery who have participated in traveling fellowships over the past year. During his five-week trip, he visited academic institutions in Japan, South Korea, and China, observing surgical procedures and participating in research presentations. He shared some of the advances that he has been working on at Mount Sinai, such as a new technique to address shoulder separations and the results of a long-term shoulder arthroplasty database focused on improvements in functional outcomes and shoulder replacement survivorship.

Dr. Cagle also garnered a wealth of new surgical techniques and best practices for managing Mount Sinai patients. He was impressed with the methodology that Chinese surgeons apply in addressing shoulder instability associated with bone loss and with the approaches that Japanese surgeons are using to manage retracted massive rotator cuff tears, resulting in low-tension repairs with high healing rates.

“It really shows that building relationships and conversations with our peers in different nations is in our better interests as orthopedic surgeons to push medicine forward,” says Dr. Cagle.

Meghan Kelly, MD, PhD, agrees. The Assistant Professor of Orthopedics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai was selected to participate in the American Orthopaedic Foot & Ankle Society’s exchange program in association with the European Foot and Ankle Society. Now in its second year, the fellowship offers society members an opportunity to visit leading foot and ankle academic institutions to build collaborations and share research with peers in selected European countries.

“It is easy to become siloed once you enter practice,” Dr. Kelly says. “The value of a traveling fellowship is that you gain exposure to different concepts and practices—some that are cultural and others that are systemic—that have the potential to enhance the ways you practice surgery.”

During her three-week traveling fellowship in Europe, Dr. Kelly met with leaders in foot and ankle surgery in Italy, Switzerland, and Belgium. They included Elena Samaila, MD, Beat Hintermann, MD, and Kris Buedts, MD. She noted differences in their approaches to patient consultations and observed techniques that are not commonly used by surgeons in the United States, such as minimally invasive bunion correction techniques and supramalleolar osteotomies for ankle joint realignment.

“The standard approach to a younger patient with an ankle deformity or arthritis among surgeons here is typically to either fuse it, which results in some loss of function, or an implant, which means there is a good chance the patient will need revision surgery in 10 years,” Dr. Kelly says. “Supramalleolar osteotomies offer a middle ground where we can do a realignment that not only maintains functionality, but also lasts longer. That will make a real difference for our younger patients.”

The fellowship has made a difference for Dr. Kelly, who is looking at ways to incorporate the techniques she observed into her armamentarium. Based on this experience, she is interested in participating in another traveling fellowship and even more intrigued by the possibility of playing host to fellows.

“I would love to pursue that for Mount Sinai because I believe we have a lot to offer in the way of best practices and research,” she says.