photograph by michael finger
Editor’s Note: Every year, the national medical group Castle Connolly compiles a list of the best doctors in America. In the Memphis area, the 2023 Top Doctors list comprises 350 physicians, representing 59 specialties. Here, we introduce you to one of the caregivers who have been named a Top Doc time and again.
A hand surgeon at Campbell Clinic and head of the Congenital Hand Clinic at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital, Dr. Benjamin Mauck knew he wanted to be an orthopaedic specialist when he was a teenager. Growing up in Savannah, Tennessee, he saw doctors help his sister recover from a sports injury. “She had surgery for a torn ACL, and they changed her life for the better,” he says. “I thought to myself, ‘What better way to help people than to become a physician?’”
After graduating from Lambuth College in Jackson, he attended medical school at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, “purely to become an orthopedic surgeon, and in particular, a hand surgeon, so I could help patients in a very significant way,” he says. “The hand is how we interact with the outside world, and when your hand is involved, it affects almost every single thing you do.”
Mauck completed his residency in hand surgery at Campbell Clinic, followed by a fellowship at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio. He joined the Campbell Clinic staff in 2012.
“It’s never boring,” he says. “This work involves treating sports injuries, trauma, cancer, and soft-tissue defects. It’s a field of orthopaedics that crosses over into other specialties like plastic surgery and neurology.”
“With the Fourth of July coming up, if I could make a PSA, I would urge all parents: Keep your children away from fireworks.” — Dr. Benjamin Mauck
At Le Bonheur, he sees children with congenital issues, such as babies born without thumbs. For those tiny patients, with surgery he transforms the index finger into a thumb, with remarkable success. Older patients come to Mauck with carpal tunnel syndrome, arthritis, tendonitis, cysts, fractures, and other problems. “We’re fortunate that the hand has a remarkable tendency to heal itself,” he says. “It’s really one of the best vascularized structures in the human body.”
It’s also one of the most complex, with muscles, tendons, blood vessels, and nerves bundled into narrow wrists and fingers. “I’m a very detail-oriented person,” says Mauck, “and I really enjoy the complexity of hands. In orthopaedic surgery, we often say that millimeters matter, and with hands one millimeter can make a huge difference.”
Although medicine has witnessed dramatic developments in total hip and knee replacement, he notes that similar procedures for his specialty haven’t kept pace. “At Campbell, we’re very good at total shoulder replacement, but elbows and wrists are lagging behind,” he says. “We are making improvements, but they’re just not where they should be by now.”
A key advancement in his field has a simple name: “wide-awake surgery.” In the past, surgeons usually performed orthopaedic procedures while the patient was under general anesthesia. “Now, we numb just one area, and the patient is awake, separated only by a screen,” he says. “It’s something we started doing more aggressively here at Campbell. Besides eliminating the risks of a reaction from general anesthesia, it allows me to tell patients exactly what I’m doing and let them know how things are going. There’s a more intimate relationship between the doctor and patient.”
Mauck wants his patients to get the same level of care as members of his own family and expresses concern as a certain national holiday approaches. “We had a young boy here who was holding a large firecracker in his hand. When it went off, it blew his hand wide open,” he says. “So with the Fourth of July coming up, if I could make a PSA, I would urge all parents: Keep your children away from fireworks.”
