Dr. Amir Haze, MD, PhD is the head orthopedic surgeon and researcher at the Foot and Ankle Unit of the Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem. He is also an academic senior lecturer at the Faculty of Medicine at the Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School. In 2019, Dr Haze received Hadassah’s Award for Exemplary Research. In 2021, he was awarded a prestigious research grant from the Israel Science Foundation.

There are 206 to 213 bones within the adult human body. Sounds like a lot, right? These include the bones located within the skull, the spine, the arms, and the legs just to name a few. Yet with so many bones located in the body, you'd have to wonder just how important taking care of them, losing them, or making them healthy again can be.

That's where our featured guest Dr. Amir Haze, MD, PhD, head orthopedic surgeon and researcher at the Foot and Ankle Unit of the Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem comes into the picture. He is one of the foremost national experts on orthopedics and his career is one that may not have been possible without Hadassah. For Dr. Haze, Hadassah hospital is part of his family. He was born there. His dad worked there and as he mentioned to us “Hadassah is like my second home,” he said.

It’s that personal passion that drives the work he does with a wide range of patients – from those with diabetes to those suffering from a sports injury. In the morning, he may see a diabetic whose leg needs to be amputated, and in the afternoon, he may be doing emergency surgery on a soccer player’s foot. In both cases, and all the ones in between, he abides by a guiding principle: Let’s give the patient the best chance.

In addition to the work he does with patients, Dr. Haze is also involved with various research projects. In one, he and his colleagues are using a person’s own stem cells to heal broken bones more quickly. In another, they are injecting a special protein into rat knees and have been able to regenerate cartilage and ligaments. They later replicated that success with goats. “We had 12 goats and a deer at Hadassah, and sometimes people were going on the elevator would see the goats,” Haze said. Trials with humans should begin in the coming months.

In this new episode of “Hadassah on Call,” Dr. Haze also gives advice on how we can all have better bone health: Weight-bearing exercises, a good diet and vitamin D are crucial to strong bones. “When you are sitting all day, then your bones will become weaker and you will have more tendency to break it.”

Looking ahead to the future, Dr. Haze sees hope in technology. “If you think about orthopedics, you always think about carpenters,” he explained. “We are breaking and sewing bones, and putting them back together with screws and plates.” New techniques are already being added to the medical toolbox: minimal invasive surgery and computer-assisted surgery, both of which are already happening at Hadassah. “You plan the surgery on the computer and then the computer helps you to be much more accurate,” he said. “And I think the imagination is the limit in this area.”

What else you'll hear in this episode:

• Dr. Haze talks about the worst bone break he's ever seen.
• Why it’s worse when older people break a bone.
• The memorable story of a soccer player whose foot Dr. Haze saved.

"Hadassah On Call: New Frontiers in Medicine" is a production of Hadassah, The Women's Zionist Organization of America. Hadassah enhances the health of people around the world through medical education, care and research innovations at the Hadassah Medical Organization. For more information on the latest advances in medicine please head over to hadassah.org.

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The show is hosted by Benyamin Cohen and edited by Skyler Inman and the team at the Hadassah offices in both New York and Israel.

Read a transcript of this episode.

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