Patrick W. Whitlock, MD, PhD

As a hip surgeon and co-director of the Hip Preservation Program at Cincinnati Children’s, I treat children, adolescents and young adults with orthopaedic trauma, hip dysplasia, Perthes disease, slipped capital femoral epiphysis (SCFE) and femoroacetabular impingement (FAI). I also perform hip arthroscopy. I strive to always provide evidence-based care that is personalized, detailed and the result of shared decision-making with our team and the patient or family.

My career is driven by the opportunity to have a positive impact on patients’ lives. I’m focused on the hip because it plays an important role in the development and the lives of our patients. By addressing diseases and conditions of the hip in young patients, we have the greatest possible impact on them throughout their lives, in our own and extended communities.

Within the Hip Preservation Program at Cincinnati Children’s, our team spends many hours reviewing imaging studies, therapy reports, notes from other physicians and our own exams. When a patient sees one team member, they benefit from the opinion of our entire hip-preservation team.

In addition to helping patients, I’m also involved in research. As a surgeon scientist, I have worked with our team to develop a multidisciplinary effort to advance the development, characterization and translation of naturally derived biomaterials to treat orthopaedic injuries and pathologies in children, adolescents and young adults. These conditions include avascular necrosis, large osteochondral defects and growth plate injuries, all of which represent a critical need for a clinically effective solution where none currently exists. Our Angela S. M. Kuo Award from the Pediatric Orthopaedic Society of North America (POSNA) recently funded our research into bioinductive scaffolds created by additive manufacturing for the treatment of large osteochondral defects.

My research has been presented at numerous national and international professional meetings, and I have authored multiple book chapters and publications related to both my clinical and translation research. Other awards include several patents related to the development of naturally derived biomaterials.

I was honored to receive the 2013 Maurice E. Muller Traveling Fellowship in Hip Reconstruction. I also received the 2017 POSNA-SLAOTI Pediatric Orthopaedic Surgery Traveling Fellowship, which took me to Chile, Argentina and Brazil to learn new techniques and exchange ideas. I was named an Emerging Leader by the American Orthopaedic Association (AOA).

In my spare time, I enjoy being outdoors with my son and my wife, who is also a local physician. As a family, we enjoy music, movies, travel, mountain biking, fishing, climbing, rowing and surfing.