Surgeon gives back so that future orthopedic patients might benefit from care

MOORESVILLE, Ind. – Michael E. Berend, MD, of Franciscan St. Francis Health-Mooresville, understands that his role as a physician means sharing his expertise so that future patients who turn to orthopedic surgeons for care.

He recently was a featured presenter at the inaugural George S.E. Aitken, MD, Lectureship at Duke University on March 12-13. Berend, a Duke graduate and a member of the Franciscan Physician Network, provided a demonstration of partial knee replacement and spoke about “Giving Back to the Community: Life Beyond Duke.”

Berend spent 10 years in the Duke University orthopedic community. He completed medical school there in 1992 and his orthopedic residency in 1998. He spent one year in the Duke Orthopedic Laboratory.

He has been practicing at the Center for Hip and Knee Surgery in Mooresville for the past 14 years, specializing in hip and knee replacement and contributing to the clinical database of more than 35,000 joint replacement procedures.

He launched a biomedical engineering laboratory in Indiana at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute, Ind., modeled after the Duke lab. The Rose-Hulman lab studies the interaction of hip and knee implants with underlying bone.

As a national and international leader in hip and knee reconstruction, Berend has published more than 80 peer reviewed papers and many book chapters. He has trained fellows at the center, many from the Duke Orthopedic Residency Program.

Berend has participated in 13 international joint replacement mission trips with Operation Walk in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Guatemala. He credits his experience at Duke for appreciating the importance of giving back and passing along knowledge and training to the next generation of surgeons. 

With this in mind, he and his brother, Keith, an orthopedic surgeon in Ohio, started the Emily S. Berend Adult Reconstruction Symposium, named after their mother. The symposium is a successful annual event at Duke.