Philippe Collin, an unexpected, technophile and innovative orthopedist

" Surgery is the best placebo there is, the most powerful. " Coming from an orthopedist who, in nearly twenty-five years of practice, has operated on more than 20,000 shoulders (his exclusive practice), this assertion is almost cause for concern. But Philippe Collin goes on to clarify: " I'm not saying that surgery is just a placebo; it's a treatment that can change people's lives. In fact, I'm fighting to ensure that patients aren't condemned to not having surgery, because of their age, for example. Telling someone, 'you're too old for surgery,' when they're suffering, is nonsense. " To support this, he has also participated in several studies on the subject, which have confirmed that age should not be a reason for excluding surgery. One, published in 2013, showed, in a series of 145 patients, that arthroscopic repair of rotator cuff lesions (tendons of the four main muscles of the shoulder) achieves good results even after 70 years of age . More recently (in 2024), another even concluded that functional gain is better in those over 70 than in those under 50 , although their healing is of poorer quality. This work received an award from the American Shoulder Society.

In truth, we had no need to be reassured about the skills of this 58-year-old orthopedist: more than 120 scientific publications to his name, academic distinctions, leadership positions in national and international learned societies, several patents on shoulder prostheses... Unusual for a non-academic, who has spent his entire career in the private sector since his clinical training. Atypical even, like his professional career, which began as a nurse. This is what made us want to get to know him, after our first contacts, in the spring of 2024.

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