Dr. Das retires after 8,000 joint replacements
Ready for retirement, Dr. Amal Das puts his feet up on the desk. Behind him is a framed newspaper clip of his father, also a physician, in the same pose when he retired. [CONTRIBUTED]
The thousands of patients who limped into Amal Das’s office and walked out with new joints that helped them hike, bike or resume pickleball can thank the Florida rattlesnakes.
After completing his internship in orthopedic surgery in Chattanooga, Dr. Das narrowed his choice of practice locations to two: St. Augustine, Florida, and Hendersonville.
In St. Augustine, his would-be medical practice partner took him to a large tract of land he had just purchased.
“And he said, ‘Look at this, they’re clearing this off. This is my new land,’” Das said. “They got a hundred rattlesnakes off of there.’ OK. I’m a big camper and I’m thinking to myself, let me rethink this.”
In Hendersonville, he asked his hosts the same thing. “Where should I go?”
Check out Flat Laurel Creek at Sam’s Knob near the Blue Ridge Parkway, they replied.
“And I was just mesmerized by the beauty of this place,” he said. In the cold creek water, he saw fish, the target of his favorite pastime.
“So I stuck my hand in the water tried to touch one of those fish.” Couldn’t reach it. “So I got a big long stick and stuck it down there. For some reason I couldn’t touch those fish. But then I peeled off all my clothes and I jumped in. I could not touch the bottom, it was so deep and so clear — and so beautiful.” The fish weren’t on the surface. They were deep in the crystal clear basin. The young doctor was sold. Goodbye rattlesnakes. Hello trout stream.
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The son of a general practitioner, Amal Das was not the type of kid who wondered about his future.
“To be honest with you, I think I was born knowing that I was going to be a physician,” he said in an interview within days of his retirement after practicing here for 30 years. “My earliest recollection — probably when I was three years old — I just knew that was what I was going to do.”
After graduating from high school, he attended Indiana University for his undergraduate and medical degrees. He was interested in specializing in orthopedic surgery and OB-GYN and was accepted into both.
“My father used to love to deliver babies and I did, too,” he said. “He delivered about 2,000 and I actually delivered 50 when I was in medical school. He said, ‘You should not be a gynecologist. That’s not something that a man should do.’ My sister wanted to become an OB-GYN and my father said, ‘Yeah, that’s a good thing, you do that.’ I guess that’s how we ended up doing what we’re doing.”
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Pardee was neither as big nor as advanced 25 years ago as it is today but in one significant frontier hospital leaders were visionary.
In 1999, Das and other orthopedists worked to set up Pardee’s Joint Replacement Center and its highly regarded joint camp.
Amal and Darlene Das“We were trying to become efficient and cost effective and we were one of the first hospitals in the United States that became efficient and cost effective for joint replacement,” he said. “The hospital became enthusiastic about it and we hired a company to help us do it and they had this kind of cookbook thing. They said, ‘If you do this, you will have a joint center up and running in six months.’ And of course I did not believe them. But we did exactly what they told us to do and it worked out.”
The surgeons and support team became so efficient, in fact, that they reduced the average length of stay for joint replacement patients from 12 days to seven days and to, now, one or two days.
Das has led courses across the country on hip and knee replacement. Among the surgical instruments he has designed is a complete set for anterior hip replacements that is marketed nationally by a medical supply company. His work with former U.S. Rep. Charles Taylor of Brevard on discrepancies in government reimbursement for hip and knee replacement surgeries helped to spark the cost containment movement in American medicine.
Dr. Das might not have a job, at least not the what he’s had for three decades here, if not for arthritis. What’s the best thing people can do, I asked him, to avoid arthritis.
“Choose their parents wisely,” he says with a chuckle. “I think the most important thing is to keep their weight down. There are some very interesting studies which show that your activity level, contrary to popular belief, doesn’t make much difference. But keeping your weight down and avoiding occupations that require repetitive stooping and bending such as being a plumber or football player would probably be the most effective thing. Unfortunately, we don’t know whether or not glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate is prophylactic — whether or not it prevents it — so I would not recommend it to prevent arthritis. It probably does but we don’t know.”
What’s been the most rewarding part?
“What I really love and what I really enjoy is seeing patients walk in, or seeing patients limp in, and then I operate on them and they walk out” free of pain, he says. “What I like to do is joint replacements but there’s nothing I like better than preventing them from having to have it done. Unfortunately, I’m frequently not successful. The modern joint replacements are amazing. It’s amazing how much we’ve improved over the years.”
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Given Dr. Das’s experience, skill and record of innovations, one might think he’ll continue to do a few surgeries or lecture or teach. But after 8,000 joint replacements over 33 years, he’s leaving the O.R. behind.
“I’m not going to do that anymore,” he says.
Das shows off a rainbow trout he caught in a stream somewhere in the North Carolina mountains. “I’d tell you where but I’d have to kill you,” he says.When I ask him whether it’s true that the quarry that has the most to fear from a retired Amal Das are trout in cold-water streams, he says no.
“I’m not going to increase the amount of fishing that I do,” he says. “The entity that has the most fear is my wife because I plan on spending more time with her.”
He and Darlene have been married for 22 years. Travel to exotic locations is not on his bucket list, either. He’s got everything he needs right here.
“I like to fish locally rather than anywhere else,” he said. “Whenever I go someplace, like, say, Colorado, it takes me two days to get there and two days to get back and I always think to myself, I could have caught more and bigger fish if I’d have stayed home.” The South Mills River, East Fork of the French Broad, Little River and the Green River are among his favorites.
Although he won’t be seen in his signature brightly colored blazers at Pardee’s orthopedic wing, motorists might catch a glimpse of him on his road bike.
“I’m not a traveler but I am going to work on cardiovascular fitness exercise,” he says. “I want to exercise at least three or four times a week instead of the one time a week that I’m doing now. I have two goals: cardiovascular exercise and spending more time with my bride.”
And, truth be told, the trout need not fear the good doctor even if does increase his fly fishing. He always turns them loose.
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Dr. Das will be honored at a reception at the Carolina Village auditorium from 1 to 4 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 22. He plans to give a short talk about how things have changed in joint replacement over the past 30 years around 1:30 p.m.
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