We caught up with pediatric orthopaedic surgeon Dr. Ryan Muchow for our latest Making the Rounds conversation. Dr. Muchow works at Kentucky Children’s Hospital and Shriners Hospitals for Children Medical Center – Lexington, where he specializes in hip surgery and hip preservation treatments.
What conditions do you treat?
We treat the entirety of pediatric orthopaedics, from birth to the young adult years. We take care of all kinds of musculoskeletal injury and conditions.
We see kids at both the Shriners Hospital as well as the Kentucky Children’s Hospital. Most of the kiddos that we work with at KCH are kids that come in in an urgent or emergent basis with an acute injury. We’re able to take care of them at a time of great need as they’ve broken bones or have been involved in a serious accident.
Most of those kids at Shriners were either born with a condition or have developed a condition. They’ve been living with it for some time, and it’s not necessarily an acute or urgent setting. But we get to meet them and help them through their journey with whatever condition they have.
What makes pediatric orthopaedics so enjoyable?
It’s this amazing field where we have the opportunity to restore activity to kids. One of the top motivations for a child is to be able to play, to be able to run around and do things carefree. And we have the ability and opportunity to come in at a special time of their life and provide that service or need to get them to a point where they can do that activity.
Why did you decide to pursue medicine as a career?
Medicine in some ways chose me. I was thinking about other interests in high school, and someone recommended to me that I look at medicine. I got involved in a program that led me into medical school. After that, it was kind of affirmation after affirmation of, “Hey, being with people is awesome, getting to do the sciences is awesome.” And so it all kind of came together in medicine.
Describe your ideal weekend.
I’d come home Friday night after work and make pizza with my wife and kids. We’d put the kids to bed and then watch a movie.
Saturday morning, I’d get up and go for a run with the family, pushing the kids and running with my wife. We’d go get donuts, and then we love to do things outside – hiking, running around and doing crazy kid stuff.
What’s your favorite food?
If I can have two favorite foods, I’d say I like pizza a lot and I also like steak a lot. Those are two completely different foods, but those are where I’d go.
Steak if I could have a nice meal out and pizza if I could do something every day of the week.
Check out our video interview with Dr. Muchow, where he tells us more about the comprehensive orthopaedic care provided by Shriners and KCH.
