photograph courtesy campbell clinic
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 2024 Top Doctors list comprises more than 400 physicians representing 60 specialties. Here, we introduce you to one of the caregivers who have been a Top Doc time and again. For a complete list, pick up a copy of our June 2024 issue from your favorite newsstand, or — even better — subscribe.
Growing up in the southwest Ohio town of Versailles, David Bernholt wanted be a doctor while still in high school. “I was on the wrestling team and suffered some knee injuries,” he says, “but I had a very positive experience with my surgeries, and went through not being able to wrestle, to getting back on the mat. So I thought that would be a very rewarding and fulfilling thing to do for other people.”
He graduated with a degree in biology from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, then earned his medical degree from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. During his residency at Barnes Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, he met a physician from Campbell Clinic. “He basically said, ‘We’re looking for a sports guy.’ My wife was from St. Louis, not too far from Memphis, so we came here and fell in love with this city and the clinic. It certainly checked all the boxes for what I was looking for professionally.”
Since joining Campbell as an orthopaedic surgeon in 2019, Bernholt has treated patients while serving as the head team physician for the Memphis Redbirds and associate team physician for the University of Memphis Tigers and Memphis Showboats. He also works with area high school athletes.
His main focus is traumatic knee injuries, which can all too often be a season- or even career-ending injury. These can damage bones, ligaments, tendons, and even arteries, and recovery can be long and painful. Bernholt’s goal is to improve the recovery process. He’s been studying a surgical procedure called lateral extra-articular tenodesis, “which actually is an old procedure that has been repurposed, and the results are impressive in terms of the re-tear rate, which has dropped from 11 percent to 4 percent, so I’ve been incorporating that into my practice.”
“When we find ways to regrow human cartilage, you’re talking about potential cures for joint injuries and even arthritis. That’s the real pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.” — Dr. David Bernholt
Bernholt is active in national groups that study ACL treatment. He serves on the education committee for the American Orthopedic Society for Sports Medicine and the research committee for the Arthroscopy Association of North America. “It’s still a challenging procedure,” he says, “but we continue to see advances and offer better outcomes overall.”
One challenge remains: getting patients active after treatment. “When we perform ACL surgery, patients must wait for the ligament to heal, and we need them to increase their muscle strength so it’s safe for them to return to the field. But that happens at different rates for different athletes. At present, there’s no way to standardize it, so we continue to evaluate what we do.”
He explains that the team at Campbell is looking at isokinetic strength, “which is how strong somebody’s knee is on a knee-extension machine. We look at functional movement, and motion-capture cameras help analyze how patients move.” Years ago, patients wore braces or solid casts while their knee healed. “Now we know that motion is good for joints, absolutely. We’re trying to get them into physical therapy maybe two days after surgery,” he says, “but we have to determine when it’s safe to do so.”
That remains a challenge. “We’re not quite there yet,” Bernholt says, “but we’re getting better at understanding the data coming in, so we can return people to their sport sooner. That’s where I see the most need for more improvement in the treatment of knee injuries.”
Campbell Clinic and other orthopaedic centers are also studying orthobiologics, the science of using the body’s own cells to repair damaged bones and ligaments. “This is a long way down the pipeline,” he says, “but when we find ways to regrow human cartilage, you’re talking about potential cures for joint injuries and even arthritis. That’s the real pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.”
