Hospital for Special Surgery · #1 Ranked Hospital for Orthopedics, U.S. News & World Report|For appointments call (646) 885-5950
Kyle N. Kunze, MD Orthopaedic Sports Medicine Surgeon Cartilage Restoration · Joint Preservation Hip · Knee · Shoulder · Regenerative Medicine
Patient Resources

Blog and Media

Notes on orthopedic care, research findings, and the questions patients ask most often — written in plain language.

Writing

Blogs

Short pieces on diagnosis, treatment decisions, rehabilitation, and the research behind them — written for patients and referring clinicians, and shaped largely by the questions asked in clinic.

Recent Posts

Knee·Aug 2026
What a Meniscus Tear Actually Means
Not every meniscus tear needs surgery, and not every one heals on its own. What the tear pattern, its location, and your age tell us about which path makes sense.
Knee·Jul 2026
Return to Sport After ACL Reconstruction
Why the nine-month mark is a floor rather than a target, and which objective tests should be passed before returning to cutting and pivoting sports.
Biologics·Jun 2026
Biologic Injections: Evidence and Expectations
Platelet-rich plasma and cell-based therapies are widely marketed. Where the evidence is genuinely supportive, and where it is not yet.
Author Insights·JBJS
Defining the Patient Acceptable Symptom State for the HOOS JR and KOOS JR After Primary Total Joint Arthroplasty
Using registry data from more than 9,000 primary hip and knee replacements, we defined the score at which patients consider their result acceptable — 76.7 for the HOOS JR and 63.7 for the KOOS JR — and showed those thresholds shift with age, sex, BMI, and baseline function.
In the Press·OrthoBuzz
Using Machine Learning to Predict Improvement After Hip Arthroscopy
JBJS covers our study of 1,118 athletes treated arthroscopically for femoroacetabular impingement, and the six preoperative variables that predict who reaches clinically meaningful improvement — a reminder that patient selection drives outcome.
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Podcasts

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Podcast segments and radio appearances covering sports medicine topics, injury prevention, and recovery. Drop episode artwork into any panel below.

HSS Presents
Clinical Orthopedic Practice & Research Integrity in the Era of AI
Dr. Kunze and Dr. Ayoosh Pareek, HSS Medical Director of AI and Digital Health, discuss where artificial intelligence is genuinely useful in musculoskeletal care — ambient scribes, predictive analytics, triage — and the questions of trust, explainability, and research integrity that come with it.
The Ortho Show
Growing in Residency
Dr. Kunze joins Scott Sigman, MD, to talk through his path into medicine, his residency experience, and his research interests in AI and orthopedics.
The OJSM Hot Corner
ACL Repair vs. ACL Reconstruction
ACL repair fell out of favor after poor early outcomes, but modern techniques have revived interest in it as an alternative to reconstruction. Drs. Kunze and Benedict Nwachukwu review the best available literature — heterogeneous in quality and mixed in results — and find that while repair may have an evolving role, its failure rate remains higher than reconstruction and it should be approached with caution.
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