April Featured Ed Board Members

Charles H. Brown Jr., MD
International Knee and Joint Centre, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Dr Charles H. Brown Jr., is Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon and Director of the International Knee and Joint Centre, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Dr Brown grew up in Detroit, Michigan and received his Bachelor’s degree of Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his MD degree from Stanford Medical School. He completed his orthopaedic training at the Harvard Combined Orthopaedic Program. After his orthopaedic residency, he spent time in Buderholz and Berne, Switzerland with Dr Werner Muller and Roli Jakob and Linkӧping, Sweden with Dr Jan Gillquist as a traveling knee fellow. Dr Brown was the Chief of Sports Medicine at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. Dr Brown has a long history of teaching and training surgeons internationally. He was one of the first American surgeons to travel to the Middle East for surgeon education. He organized the first cadaveric training courses in Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia He has hosted surgeons in Abu Dhabi from Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Ireland, UK, Netherlands, Belgium, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, , South Africa, India, Pakistan, China, Australia, Thailand, Malaysia and Brazil. In 2006, he left Boston to establish and become the Medical Director of the Abu Dhabi Knee and Sports Medicine Centre in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. In order to better serve the needs of the growing population of the United Arab Emirates, he established his own center, the International Knee and Joint Centre in Abu Dhabi.

Dr Brown is a member of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine, the European Society of Sports Traumatology Knee Surgery and Arthroscopy, the International Society of Arthroscopy, Knee Surgery & Orthopaedic Sports Medicine, and the ACL Study Group.

Dr Brown is a pioneer in the development of arthroscopically-assisted ACL reconstruction techniques and instrumentation, suture based all-inside meniscal repair surgical techniques and instrumentation, and the use of hamstring tendon grafts for ACL reconstruction. He performed the first arthroscopically-assisted ACL reconstruction in the Middle East, established the first tissue bank in the Middle East, and was the first surgeon in the region to use allograft tissue to perform complex knee ligament reconstructions. His work on the ACL has been awarded the Herodicus Award and the Aircast Award by the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine.

Selected Published Works

Chen N, Brand JC, Brown CH. Biomechanics of intratunnel ACL graft fixation. Clinics in Sports Medicine, 2007; 26:695-714.

Greaves LL, Hecker AT, Brown CH. The effect of donor age and low-dose gamma irradiation on the initial biomechanical properties of human tibialis tendon allografts. American J Sports Med, 2008; 36:1358-1366.

Bird JH, Carmont MR, Dhillon M, Smith N, Brown CH, Spalding T. Validation of a New Technique to Determine Mid-bundle Femoral Tunnel Position in Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction Using 3-Dimensional Computed Tomography Analysis. Arthroscopy, 2011; 27(9):1259-1267

Mueffels DE, Potter J-W, Koning AH, Brown CH, et al. Visualization of post-operative anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction bone tunnels. Reliablity of standard radiographs, CT scans, and 3D virtual reality images. Acta Orthopaedica, 2011; 82(6):699 – 703.

Brown CH, Spalding T, Robb C. Medial portal technique for single-bundle anatomical anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction. International Orthopaedic (SICOT), 2013; 37:253-269

Pandey V, Brown CH, Tapaswi S. Posterior cruciate ligament reconstruction. In Rajgopal A, editor. Knee Surgery. New Delhi, Jaypee.

Spalding T, Robb C, Brown CH. Femoral bone tunnel placement (arthroscopically and with fluoroscopy). Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction: A Practical Surgical Guide, Springer

Versteeg AL, Pijnenburg ACM, Brown CH. Anatomic ACL Reconstruction: Surgical Techniques. 2^nd edition, Sports Injuries, Springer

ESSKA DVD, Management of ACL Injuries in Athletes: Technical Considerations of ACL Reconstruction – Tibial and Femoral tunnel placement

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Marc R. Safran, MD
Sports Medicine, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Stanford University, CA

Marc R. Safran, MD is Professor and Associate Director of the Division of Sports Medicine in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Stanford University. He is a team physician for the Stanford Teams and is the director of the sport medicine fellowship program at Stanford. He is the chief orthopaedic consultant for the Women’s Professional Tennis tour.

Dr. Safran earned his undergraduate degree with an independent major from the University of California, Berkeley in 1983. He completed medical school at Duke University (1987), before returning to his native Los Angeles for his orthopaedic training.  He completed his general surgery internship (1988) and orthopaedic surgery residency at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1993. During his residency, he completed a one-year research fellowship in arthroplasty and joint stiffness under the tutelage of Roy Meals and Harlan Amstutz, funded through the National Institutes of Health. In 1993, he spent a year at the University of Pittsburgh where he completed the Sports Medicine and Shoulder Surgery fellowship under the guidance of Freddie Fu, Chris Harner and Jon JP Warner.

Following fellowship in Pittsburgh, Dr. Safran worked in private practice in San Diego, California while also being on the clinical faculty of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) as an assistant professor.  After 2 years in private practice, Dr. Safran joined a health maintenance organization in Orange County, California, where he was the co-director of sports medicine, director of sports medicine research, and residency coordinator for residents from the University of California, Irvine (UCI). He was also a team physician for the University of California, Irvine athletic teams.  He was promoted to Associate Clinical Professor at UCI prior to leaving to Northern California.  He joined the full time faculty at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) in 2001 as an Associate Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery, Chief of the Division of Sports Medicine, Sports Medicine Fellowship Director, and the Chief of the Shoulder and Elbow Service.  He started the PLAYSAFE program in San Francisco, which provided free care and game coverage for the San Francisco Public High Schools, as well as a San Francisco private high school (2003-2007). While at UCSF, he was a team physician the University of California Men’s Basketball and Baseball teams (2002 – 2007), while also assisting in the care of other Cal athletes and sports.  Additionally, he was the head team physician for Notre Dame de Namur University, an NCAA Division 2 collegiate program (2002 – 2014).   In 2007, he joined the faculty of Stanford University as a Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery and Associate Chief of the Sports Medicine Division, and team physician, including head team physician for Men’s Basketball and Baseball as well as Women’s Basketball and Volleyball. Dr. Safran put together and helped guide the MAHORN (multicenter arthroscopy of the hip outcomes research network), which developed the iHOT (international hip outcomes tool) outcomes questionnaire for the active patient with non-arthritic hip pain. Dr. Safran was also the medical director of the San Diego Women’s Professional Tennis Association (WTA) tournament from 1995 until 2007 and medical director of the ATP tournament in San Jose (2002 – 1012), and has served as the neutral site physician for several Davis Cup ties. He has also served on the USTA Sports Science Committee.

Dr. Safran has served as a board member of several orthopaedic societies including the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine (AOSSM), the International Orthopaedic Society for Arthroscopy, Knee Surgery and Orthopaedic Sports Medicine (ISAKOS), the American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons Society (ASES), the International Society for Hip Arthroscopy (ISHA) and the Society for Tennis Medicine and Science (STMS), the latter of which he was President (2006-2011). He was a reviewer and, later, Chairman, of the scientific advisory board for the Aircast / Airlift / Extremity War Trauma Research Foundation (2004 – 2011).  Currenlty, Dr. Safran is the Vice President of the ISAKOS (to be President 2019 – 2021), as well as ISHA (to be President 2015-2016)

Further, Dr. Safran serves on several editorial boards and is a member of several other organizations, serving on many committees, including the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS), Western Orthopaedic Association (WOA) and American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM). He is also an elected member of the Herodicus Society, ACL Study Group, Magellan Society, and American Orthopaedic Association (AOA). Dr. Safran serves as a master instructor the Arthroscopy Association of North America (AANA) at the Orthopaedic Learning Center. He has served as a reviewer for AJSM for more than 20 years and as an associate editor of AJSM for over a decade.  He had the honor of serving as a co-editor for the AJSM Special Supplement on Hip Arthroscopy with Mark Hutchinson…and they became known as the Orthopaedic Marx Brothers.  He also helped start the Journal of Hip Preservation Surgery, serving as Deputy Editor for Arthroscopy, while also being a reviewer and/or editor for a other dozen journals.

Dr. Safran has authored or co-authored more than 150 scientific articles, 105 book chapters, and 7 books relating to orthopaedic surgery, focusing mainly on sports medicine.

Dr. Safran has been fortunate to have been an AOSSM – ESSKA Traveling Fellow with Tom DeBerardino and Sandy Kirkley in 2000 with Peter Indelicato as the Godfather.  Among his most treasured achievements is receiving the Irving Glick Physician of the Year Award from the WTA in 2001 and the Tennis Education Merit Award from the International Tennis Hall of Fame and the USTA in 2007.

Marc has been happily married to Lee for over 20 years and they have 3 wonderful children.  Janna is a competitive swimmer who will be enrolling at Dickinson College in the fall, and Nathan and Clark – both nationally ranked tennis players who are still in high school.  Lee continues to play some tennis and enjoy book clubs, when not navigating the parenting scene.  Marc is not playing much tennis anymore, but enjoys biking and hiking, having recently climbed Mt Fuji with Nathan to see the sunrise from the top of the mountain, and then hiking the Grand Canyon with the whole family.

Selected Published Works

Young SW, Dakic J, Stroia K, Nguyen ML, Harris AHS, Safran MR:  Hip Range of Motion And Association With Injury in Female Professional Tennis Players. Am J Sports Med, 42 (11): 2654 – 2658, 2014

Rylander JD, Shu B, Andriacchi TP, Safran MR: Preoperative and Postoperative Sagittal Plane Hip Kinematics in Patients with Femoroacetabular Impingement During Level Walking. Am J Sports Med, 39 (1): 36S – 42S, 2011

Mihata T, Safran MR, McGarry MH, Abe M, Lee TQ: Elbow Valgus Laxity May Result in an Over-estimation of Apparent Shoulder External Rotation during Physical Examination. Am J Sports Med, 36(5): 978-982, 2008

Kuhn JE, Dunn WR, Ma B, Wright RW, Jones G, Spencer EE, Wolf B, Safran M, Spindler KP, McCarty E, Kelly B, Holloway B. Interobserver Agreement in the Classification of Rotator Cuff Tears.  Am J Sports Med, 35(3):437 –  441, 2007

Safran, M.R., Garrett, W.E. Jr., Seaber, A.V., Glisson, R.R., Ribbeck, B.M.:  The Role of Warm Up in Muscular Injury Prevention.  Am J Sports Med, 16(2): 123-129, 1988.