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As a member of the Princeton men’s basketball team, Ben Domb was a part of the Tigers historic upset of UCLA in the 1996 National Tournament.
Now the medical director of the new Hip Center of Excellence at Adventist Hinsdale Hospital, the 34-year old doctor continues to do the unthinkable.
Grouped with his team of top doctors, Domb is involved with a procedure called hip arthroscopy which aims to correct labral tears of the hip. Where once hip replacement was perceived to be the answer, Domb said this cutting-edge surgery is now considered the quickest and most effective way to address hip injuries in athletes young and old.
“Athletes of all ages have hip injuries that have gone undiagnosed,” Domb said. “It has been one of the most misdiagnosed injuries in medicine. You saw it with Alex Rodriguez and Kurt Warner — five years ago, they would have been told they had a groin pull and couldn’t do anything or in other situations like Bo Jackson, that they needed a hip replacement.
“Now hip injuries, like labrum tears and impingement, can be successfully treated. The goal with this much less invasive surgery is to have the hip repaired instead of replaced with artificial parts. Nobody can disagree, we’ve made a big leap forward where we are now able to understand hip injuries, diagnose them and fix them.”
Domb first got involved with the world of athletics growing up in Canada before he decided to make the trek to Princeton to continue his basketball career as a walk-on.
“I was the first kid from my high school to go there,” Domb said. “I wanted to get a good education and I was also interested in playing Division I basketball. It all kind of came together for me; I got into Princeton and I walked onto the team. It was a terrific experience educationally and socially and I made most of my best friends in my life there.
“Basketball was also terrific. In my four years, we won conference the last two years, went to the NCAAs the last two years and had one of the bigger upsets in NCAA history. My coach was Pete Carril, and Bill Carmody (now head coach at Northwestern) was an assistant coach. Mitch Henderson was a teammate and now he’s an assistant coach at Northwestern.”
After graduation from Princeton in 1997, the 6-foot-7 forward went on to play professional basketball for a season in Barcelona.
As a member of the Princeton men’s basketball team, Ben Domb was a part of the Tigers historic upset of UCLA in the 1996 National Tournament.
Now the medical director of the new Hip Center of Excellence at Adventist Hinsdale Hospital, the 34-year old doctor continues to do the unthinkable.
Grouped with his team of top doctors, Domb is involved with a procedure called hip arthroscopy which aims to correct labral tears of the hip. Where once hip replacement was perceived to be the answer, Domb said this cutting-edge surgery is now considered the quickest and most effective way to address hip injuries in athletes young and old.
“Athletes of all ages have hip injuries that have gone undiagnosed,” Domb said. “It has been one of the most misdiagnosed injuries in medicine. You saw it with Alex Rodriguez and Kurt Warner — five years ago, they would have been told they had a groin pull and couldn’t do anything or in other situations like Bo Jackson, that they needed a hip replacement.
“Now hip injuries, like labrum tears and impingement, can be successfully treated. The goal with this much less invasive surgery is to have the hip repaired instead of replaced with artificial parts. Nobody can disagree, we’ve made a big leap forward where we are now able to understand hip injuries, diagnose them and fix them.”
Domb first got involved with the world of athletics growing up in Canada before he decided to make the trek to Princeton to continue his basketball career as a walk-on.
“I was the first kid from my high school to go there,” Domb said. “I wanted to get a good education and I was also interested in playing Division I basketball. It all kind of came together for me; I got into Princeton and I walked onto the team. It was a terrific experience educationally and socially and I made most of my best friends in my life there.
“Basketball was also terrific. In my four years, we won conference the last two years, went to the NCAAs the last two years and had one of the bigger upsets in NCAA history. My coach was Pete Carril, and Bill Carmody (now head coach at Northwestern) was an assistant coach. Mitch Henderson was a teammate and now he’s an assistant coach at Northwestern.”
After graduation from Princeton in 1997, the 6-foot-7 forward went on to play professional basketball for a season in Barcelona.
“It was great,” he said. “It was a very big level up from the college basketball I played. The size and athleticism of players over there was greater. I had gotten into medical school already and I knew I wanted to be a doctor so I was doing it as something fun before medical school. It was a great experience and a fun way to travel. I didn’t have the pressure of some of my teammates of making it a career.”
Domb went on to earn his Doctorate of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University before completing his orthopedic surgery residency at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York. He then headed off to the Kerlan-Jobe Orthopedic Clinic in California where he served as an assistant team physician for the pro sports teams in the area including the Lakers, Dodgers, Kings and Galaxy.
There Domb ran into such athletes as Kobe Bryant and David Beckham.
“Kobe stands out,” he said, “because of what type of athlete he is. A, he is the leader of that team and B, just his competitive drive. Somebody driven like that is arguably the best kind of patient when he is injured. He was so driven to get over an injury.”
After spending a year in L.A., Domb relocated to Illinois where he continues to combine two of his loves, sports and medicine.
“It is fun for me,” Domb said. “It started with an interest in sports and the way that athletes’ bodies work and how to fix them. It is a great privilege and honor to do something I’m good at while being around something I like which is sports.”
BOX:
The Ben Domb file
AGE 34
RESIDENCE Chicago
FAMILY Wife Anna, infant son Elijah
TITLE Medical Director of the Hip Center of Excellence at Adventist Hinsdale Hospital
PLAYING EXPERIENCE Princeton basketball (1993-97); pro basketball in Spain (1997)
