Dr. Austin T. Fragomen

Austin T. Fragomen, MD, specializes in orthopaedic surgery at the Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) in New York City, where he serves as an attending orthopaedic surgeon and the fellowship director of the Limb Lengthening and Complex Reconstruction Service.

With a focus on limb salvage and reconstruction, Dr. Fragomen cares for adults and children who have a variety of unique orthopedic issues. These include congenital deformities, bone infections, limb-length discrepancies, arthritic joints, trauma, bowed legs, and “knock knees.”

He performs a range of sophisticated, specialized surgeries and techniques, including limb lengthening, joint preservation and realignment, treatment of bone infections, reconstruction surgery using the Ilizarov technique, limb-deformity correction, and complex fracture repair.

In many cases, Dr. Fragomen and his team are able to free people from problems they’ve suffered with for years.

“Every problem we see is unique in a lot of ways, so everything we do is highly individualized and tailored to each patient,” says Dr. Fragomen.

“I get a lot of satisfaction from treating patients — many of whom have been told that there’s nothing that can be done for their particular condition or problem. Our patients are strong and inspiring, and I love caring for them and helping to improve their lives.”

Dr. Fragomen has served since 2013 as both an associate professor of clinical orthopaedic surgery at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City and as an associate attending orthopaedic surgeon at HSS. He joined both institutions as an instructor in 2005.

He is proud to be part of the multidisciplinary Hospital for Special Surgery, a prestigious center that unites many types of highly specialized surgeons.

“The HSS is home to more surgical specialties than any other hospital in the country, and the Limb Lengthening and Complex Reconstruction Service is one of its unique specialties,” Dr. Fragomen says.

“Ours is one of very few programs in the U.S. that treats many of the issues we treat,” he continues. “And it’s not just the surgeons who are specialists; our experienced support staff are specially trained to assist patients from the moment they walk into our office to the time they leave the hospital.”

He is regularly called in by other types of surgical specialists — trauma surgeons, pediatric surgeons, and foot and ankle surgeons, for example — to assist with difficult bone-healing cases. He frequently works with sports medicine doctors, as well.

Dr. Fragomen earned his medical degree from the State University of New York Health Science Center at Brooklyn College of Medicine in Brooklyn, New York. He completed a five-year orthopaedic surgery residency at Saint Vincent Catholic Medical Centers (Brooklyn and Queens); a fellowship in shoulder and knee surgery at California Pacific Medical Center and Saint Mary’s Medical Center in San Francisco; and a fellowship in limb lengthening and reconstruction surgery at the HSS.

He also holds a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts.

Dr. Fragomen has published more than 100 journal articles, serves as a reviewer and editor for a number of academic publications, and lectures nationally and around the world.

He is board-certified, a Fellow of both the American Board of Orthopaedic Surgery and the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons.

Among his many professional activities, Dr. Fragomen is a past president of the Limb Lengthening and Reconstruction Society-Association of Study and Application of Methods of Ilizarov in North America.

His current research interests include congenital deformity, limb deformity, bone infection, bone healing, and joint preservation.