Renowned for its Orthopedic Department, Morristown Medical Center stands as a beacon of exceptional medical care. With approximately 120 orthopedic surgeons, the department boasts an extraordinary blend of quality, dedication, and expertise, performing over 12,000 orthopedic surgical procedures in 2023 alone. In addition to its ranking in the top 1% in the nation in orthopedics, Morristown is a Level 1 Trauma Center and the nursing staff recently achieved magnet status, which is the highest award granted by the American Nurses Association.
Dr. James C. Wittig, Chairman of the Department of Orthopedics at Morristown Medical Center and Medical Director, Orthopedics, Orthopedic Oncology and Sarcoma Surgery, Atlantic Health System
James C. Wittig is a distinguished figure in the field. He was recently asked to shed light on the department's remarkable achievements over the last year, his role supporting the department, and the most rewarding aspects of his job.
Q: What drew you to the field of Orthopedic Oncology?
Dr. Wittig: It's a great specialty and there were a variety of reasons that drew me to this field. One was the amazing impact that you have on patients, especially pediatric patients. Being able to participate in saving their lives and their limbs and giving them a much better quality of life then if they had an amputation. Lastly – and most importantly, watching them grow up. It's very, very rewarding and fulfilling to be able to use your skills and knowledge to help others, particularly those who are in extreme circumstances who require very complex surgeries.
Within orthopedic oncology - every tumor, even if it's a similar type of tumor can require a different kind of operation. The tumor could be just two centimeters over, in a different spot, and it changes the operation. There's a lot of creativity involved in these operations, which I enjoy and I also enjoy the diagnostic aspects of it, reviewing radiological films, correlating it with the pathology, figuring out what type of tumor each patient has and following them through their treatment. Seeing them through their full course allows me to have a long-term relationship with my patients.
Q: Given that education and training is a centerpiece of Morristown Medical Center. Can you tell us a bit about your Orthopedic Surgery residency program?
Dr. Wittig: When I became the Chairman of Orthopedic Surgery in 2018, I was tasked with developing academics and research within our system, elevating our reputation. I felt this was very important because we have all this amazing orthopedic surgery going on, we have the volume, we have the quality, and my goal was to really build the residency program. With the help of a five-million-dollar donation from Kathy Christie, we were able to start our residency program. After the approval process with ACGME, we took our first class of four residents this year as interns. In the first year, they spent half in orthopedics and half in other specialties. In their second year, they'll be doing all of orthopedics. We have an excellent didactic curriculum set up for them. We had a boot camp to introduce them to the foundation of orthopedics and prepare them for the volume they will be exposed to and train them on the quality we uphold at Morristown. We're sending them to microsurgery courses their first year to learn the techniques on how to handle blood vessels and nerves and use fine instruments. We also have wet labs where they can go and practice their skills on either cadavers or mannequins.
I'm very confident that by the time they're done with their third year of residency, they're probably going to be equivalent to many fifth years at other programs because of the volume and the attention they're getting.
Morristown has also ventured into different educational aspects of orthopedic oncology during my time here. I am the key editor on a book that details the procedures and techniques involved in orthopedic surgical oncology. There are probably over 100 different types of surgical procedures in this field. I’m also proud to say that we've been the producers of numerous educational surgical videos many of which are accepted for publication and have gone on to win awards at national platforms like the National American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons.
Q: Can you talk about the latest surgical technologies you are currently using?
Dr. Wittig: More recently I've used a new technology called The AiroÒ, it's an intraoperative CAT scan that also allows you to do some navigation. I've used that on two cases. In one case, I worked with spine surgeon, Dr Jason Lowenstein, resecting a very huge soft tissue sarcoma involving the spine and the pelvis. Dr Lowenstein used it for his purposes. I used it because of the way the patient was positioned - to know the extent of the tumor and be able to transect the muscles at a distance from the tumor, utilizing the navigation intraoperatively without actually visualizing the tumor.
In another more recent case, I did an acetabular reconstruction with a metastatic kidney cancer to the bone that was extremely extensive. The CAT scan was very useful in helping me ablate the tumor prior to removal in the OR. Ablating it enabled me to decrease the blood loss. When kidney cancers travel to the bone they're very, very, vascular, and even just opening the bone can cause severe hemorrhage. So, we used the CAT scan to put these probes into the lesion and kill the lesion before taking it out. There was very little bleeding after this and it also enabled me to put key screws into the pelvis, utilizing the navigation portion, because there was extensive destruction of the hip. I put the key screws in, in unique locations, the navigation features of the Airo really helped me with this.
Q: What is next for you at Morristown Medical Center?
Yvette Ho, MD
Dr. Wittig: We are actively building our orthopedic oncology subspeciality. In this past year, we completed 550 orthopedic oncology surgeries, which is a tremendous number. I am excited to share that we’ve recruited Dr. Yvette Ho, who is a orthopedic oncologist with expertise in bone and soft tissue sarcomas. Our next ventures in orthopedic oncology are going to be focused on starting multiple different clinical trials, partnering with different companies and industry to explore innovative ways of treating patients. We’re always pushing toward developing better treatments, newer care, and growing, while giving the best quality that there is.
It's really a wonderful culture at Morristown Medical Center, which is influenced by our leadership that's in place. Our fantastic president, Trish O'Keefe, who's been here as a nurse for over 30 years and started out as an orthopedic nurse. She does an amazing job running the hospital. We really can offer our patients the best - the best possible attendings with the best possible training. You can see the motivation, dedication, and the meticulousness of all our surgeons. All these factors make for an amazing hospital and an amazing Orthopedic Department.
Our Commitment
Dr. Wittig attributes this success to the diverse subspecialties offered at Morristown Medical Center, such as his specialty, orthopedic oncology. “The way I run orthopedic oncology, is that I believe that patients are best taken care of in a setting that incorporates education, research, high surgical volume, and patient-centric care,” shares Wittig.
Atlantic Health System and Morristown Medical Center is one of the few programs in the region to offer limb-sparing surgery. The highly specialized team at Morristown is skilled at removing bone and soft tissue sarcomas while preserving the surrounding anatomy so that patients can avoid amputation.
In addition to orthopedics, Morristown is nationally recognized for its services in cardiology, heart & vascular surgery, ENT, geriatrics, obstetrics & gynecology, and pulmonology. All these specialties work together to offer a multidisciplinary patient-centered team approach to care.
Learn more about the orthopedic conditions we treat.