Solidarity HealthShare Chief Medical Officer Dr. John Oertle joins Bob Sansevere of The BS Show to discuss hot topics in the medical field from preterm birth viability to Regenexx in a new, thought-provoking interview.
Bob Sansevere (00:00):
We are joined by Dr. John Oertle, the Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer for Solidarity HealthShare at solidarityhealthshare.org. Doctor, I want to start off by reading to you a piece by a very talented writer that starts off like this: ‘In many hospitals and medical facilities today, a non-scientific assessment of fetal viability is used to withhold critical care. There are hospitals and practitioners across the country who lack the basic willingness to intervene with life-saving medical technology to help extremely preterm newborns and those diagnosed with disabilities. The grounds for this lack of intervention are not medical or scientific in nature.’ This sounds frightening. And by the way, the writer, his name is just like yours. It’s by John Oertle. That would be, that is you, right? Dr. Oertle.
Dr. John Oertle (00:58):
It is me. Bob. You got it. Yeah. That was a piece that was recently published in the National Review, and I’m usually coming onto your show talking about more of these medical topics. As far as this goes, this is a piece that I wrote because I wanted to be able to raise awareness on what was going on. And I think our hospitals across the country these days, so I don’t know if you know this, but I myself, I got into the world of this world of premature infant data and research because about three years ago, my wife had a threatened delivery at around again early on in the pregnancy with her water breaking very early on. And so our baby was threatened as far as this goes early on in pregnancy. And so as a researcher, I started jumping into all the data and all the research to be able to actually find out what’s the best treatment for my wife and for my baby that was being threatened.
(02:04):
And by the grace of God, and through a lot of research and data and good medical care, we were able to extend my wife’s pregnancy out. My baby was born still very premature and spent a lot of time in the nicu solidarity shared into those expenses. And I was grateful for all of that. But at the same time, it really rose in awareness. And I’ve become somewhat of an expert on working with individuals that are having threatened premature births at what I call the edge of viability, meaning this threatening this age, usually it’s around 24 weeks gestation, meaning 24 weeks pregnant or before where babies and depending upon the hospital that you’re born in, babies are either offered the ability to be able to keep fighting or if they’re born before that they aren’t. And this is where when I looked at the data and actually saw you actually found that even infants that were born at that edge of viability at around 21 to 24 weeks gestation, they actually had a good chance of survival.
(03:15):
This was where it started getting, this is where if you start to do the latest advancements with the ability of NICU care and being able to provide the ability of getting what we call steroids to the mom before the baby’s actually born, you get a better chance at survivability. And so what I started noticing is that if babies are surviving this care when they’re actually born at that edge of viability of around 21 to 24 weeks, and every parent should be offered that opportunity to be able to choose those life-saving parameters for babies. And what I started noticing was, again, it’s not always offered and parents are oftentimes being discriminated against for even wanting to try where the data is actually showing that there’s an actual good likelihood of survivability if you’re able to treat. Now, it’s a very difficult situation, very challenging situation, a lot of difficulties being able to move forward in this treatment.
(04:15):
But at the same time, when you actually see the latest advancements and the data, I think people, babies deserve that opportunity. Parents deserve that opportunity. I liken this to many times. It’s an example of say for instance, if you had a coronary artery bypass surgery that you needed because your coronary arteries were blocked and you’re going to a hospital and they don’t offer that cardiothoracic surgeon to be able to provide that lifesaving treatment. Well, the routine thing, because they want you to survive and you have dignity and worth to be able to get that treatment, they will transfer you to a cardiothoracic surgeon to offer you that treatment to be able to make sure that you’re getting the care that you need. And this is where for an adult that’s easy to see, but when we’re an infant and we are a premature infant, what I’m seeing is that there’s a discriminatory view on these children just because again, they’re young and there’s a chance of mortality, they’re not being offered all those options. And so it really does limit the consent of the parents to be able to choose what are the best options. So just like the gentleman that would having a coronary artery bypass, he has dignity and worth to be able to provide the procedure. Again, I wrote the article to be able to raise awareness to hospitals and to parents and people that are in facing these situations to be able to actually know that the data has improved. And if you do those lifesaving treatments is a good likelihood that again, the child will survive.
Bob Sansevere (05:48):
Now, how old is your child now?
Dr. John Oertle (05:51):
Oh, he’s two and a half years old. He turns three in November.
Bob Sansevere (05:54):
Completely fine now.
Dr. John Oertle (05:56):
And so this is the other- Yeah, so he is completely healthy. He’s a completely healthy two and a half year old. He’s got a vocabulary that’s just amazing. He’s just a great, great kid, but is completely healthy, no neurological issues. And this is the other misnomer is that what, and I mentioned this in the article as well, because oftentimes the argument is, well, these children, even if they survive that they’re not going to have a good quality of life, that they’re going to have symptoms and severe neurological symptoms primarily going into the future. And there’s actually a follow-up study that was done in the same journal of pediatrics and actually tracked and followed these kids who had survived these early preterm births and in just basic levels of care. And obviously there was a lot of NICU support and a lot of physical therapies, but at two years old, these children, about 70% of ’em had either mild to no neurological symptoms originating.
(06:58):
They were healthy children. And so that was the other dynamic is that just because there’s a lot of medical care that’s provided in those first couple of years, they actually have really good rates of doing very well. Now, again, I want to couch that, but that’s not everybody. There’s still children who survive and will still have some significant disabilities, but at the same time, again, when you’re looking at about 70% of those children that survive, that actually have minimal to no neurological symptoms, that’s wonderful news. Absolutely. Is it worth the actual ability to keep fighting?
Bob Sansevere (07:32):
Well, and you know what? And the good thing to come out of this is it was you who had the issue with the child. And I mean that’s if there’s a silver lining what happened to your child, it’s that it raised your awareness, which is now helping raise the awareness for other people and helping them, which is an odd way. It’s wonderful
Dr. John Oertle (07:52):
I’ve helped many of these families who have called in and got the right specialists involved or the neonatologists involved or transferred the care from one hospital to another to be able to actually get the lifesaving treatments. And we’ve helped, again, a number of these babies who have been and parents who have been in these difficult situations and being able to actually provide them with the data, the research and being able to help the doctors and then make good decisions for their children,
Bob Sansevere (08:16):
Which again, absolutely terrific. Now, I’m going to switch gears here. I’ve talked about on the show before, but I’ve had head shoulder surgery going in for what was supposed to be a routine rotator cuff repair. Well, it turned out that it had atrophied and two things I wanted to ask. One, I had an MRI and does atrophy not show? Apparently it doesn’t show on an MRI, which I thought it showed everything. And then the other thing I want you to tell listeners about something you told me off the air Regenexx, but start with the MRI and that you may go into surgery and not know how bad it is. Is that accurate?
Dr. John Oertle (08:51):
Yeah, so oh, Bob, I’m so sorry that you had that experience again. It does happen actually quite on a regular basis. MRIs are great images. They use magnetics to be able to actually see and give a clear image of tissue specifically of soft tissue. So again, joints, tendons, ligaments. This is where orthopedics love MRIs. They’re great technology, great imaging, but even though they are good, they’re not a hundred percent conclusive as far as that goes. So sometimes, one, you want to be able to have a good doctor to read an MRI effectively and read it with a lot of, again, oversight. So that’s the first thing. So you can, sometimes it can be prevented because of the fact that, again, if you’re having a doc to actually evaluate the MRI and evaluate it, very conclusively that matters. Okay? So that’s the first thing is getting a doc or a radiologist to really fully understand that and look at the MRI in detail for you.
(09:45):
But there are some of those situations where you just can’t tell until you’re actually inside a joint and then it actually looks at it then it’s not a complete, it’s a representation, not the actual thing itself. There are situations where when you get in, you don’t see it until you actually are in the actual joint in the surgery. That was, that being said, unfortunately that does happen. I try to minimize that because it’s frustrating, it’s irritating when you go through that. One of the things I was sharing though is that for you offline and what you mentioned was what I really appreciate is getting an opinion of somebody that does what, again, is more of the latest in orthopedic surgeries doing regenerative medicine. Now what is that? Instead of just going in cutting it or attaching or cleaning it on up as a lot of orthopedics do or doing full replacements of joints, what regenerative medicine does is that there’s been an advancement of medications, biologics, your own cells and your own natural body’s ability to be able to actually take your cells and actually inject or molecules from your body to be able to inject, to be able to help regenerate and stimulate the body’s ability to heal.
(11:04):
And repair. Joints typically don’t heal very well. That’s one of the reasons is that they don’t heal well. They don’t have good blood flow getting to tendons, ligaments, cartilage, and so there’s a lack of blood flow and a lack of repair. So when you have regenerative doctors using these latest technology to be able to actually regenerate the body’s healing, that’s a very exciting way to be able to actually, again, that’s advancements specifically in orthopedics. And so at Solidarity, we’ve partnered with a preferred provider relationship with Regenexx. There’s other providers nationwide as well. But we share into all of this because we believe, again, it’s one, just think about this. If you’re able to actually get, instead of that atrophy, getting that body to start and start actually improving with just natural ability that your body’s already designed with just supporting its ability to heal, that’s where you can start to be able to have quicker recovery times, better improvement, better outcomes.
(12:07):
And what we actually see at Solidarity is that it’s a cheaper cost than going through a full orthopedic surgery to be able to actually, and then takes the time to repair, recover physical therapy on top of that just to be able to actually improve. So this is where we love this therapy. It’s something that is not oftentimes covered by major medical plans or insurance companies nationwide. And so what we do is, again, at Solidarity, we love being able to be able to share into these medical advancements to be able to make sure that patients have the best outcomes and that we are able to actually, all the community is able to save cost at the same time. So it’s a win-win for everybody. So that’s where Regenexx is a wonderful company. They’re all across the country and you can look up their website and look at their various locations at regenexx.com.
Bob Sansevere (12:55):
And for me, the closest one would be, actually, it’s going to be in Waterloo, Iowa. And so I’m going to check that out also in Des Moines, not in Minnesota, but we’re going to look into it and check out solidarityhealthshare.org because they will help you fund this as opposed to more traditional healthcare. Dr. Oertle as always, greatly appreciated. We’ll take a quick break and The BS Show will be right back.
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