Doctor Profile: Christopher E. Baker, MD

Dr. Baker: So my name is Chris Baker. I’m an orthopedic surgeon. I’m a board-certified. I’m fellowship-trained in sports medicine and shoulder reconstruction surgery. I’m married to my college sweetheart now. We’ve been together for 16 years now. We’ve been married for 11 of those years. We have two beautiful kids. We have a six year old boy and a three year old girl. So I’m currently in the period of my life where I immediately leave from the office to a tee-ball or gymnastics. And there is no Dr. Baker time. There is family time and there is Dr. Baker working time and that’s about it. Sports medicine is a little bit of a misnomer. A lot of the patients that I see tend to think that sports medicine doesn’t apply to them. What sports medicine really means is arthroscopy, small incisions, minimally invasive type surgeries that can range from anywhere from an athlete, getting an ACL reconstruction all the way to an elderly person with a rotator cuff repair.

Because I’m a shoulder fellowship-trained doctor, I also do reconstruction of the shoulder, which includes anything from replacements of the shoulder, both in regards to fracture or rotator cuff tears or arthritis. Most things that we treat do not have a finite answer. There are multiple answers for many of the things that we treat, the vast majority of which are non-operative. Just because you see the orthopedic surgeon doesn’t mean we have to go to get an MRI because you have shoulder pain.

We discussed what we, the pros and cons of each of those decisions are, well, Dr. Baker is the, when he walks into a room, he’s got the biggest smile. He makes you feel so at ease and he’s like, you’re the only patient that is, is on his mind right then and there. He’s got all the time in the world for you.
And he did a lot of really good explaining on how all the procedure was going to be. Like it was gonna work. Any questions I asked, he answered. And it was quite simple. The whole thing. I had trouble actually. Lifting my shoulder to a certain degree backwards and going way back and, you know, doing a lot of stuff like that. And then my normal workout routine. I couldn’t do a lot that I was doing before. Weights, not heavy weights but weights and just overall getting down, getting up on the floor of the gym, you know, there’s a lot that I just, I just couldn’t do. It was getting more and more and more painful. And then I did have a little fall and that’s what made it worse and that’s when we said, okay, it’s time to go.

I’m proud to be a part of Florida Orthopaedic Institute because of the quality of the guys that are here. We are without a doubt the preeminent program in the entire state of Florida. Every doctor here is fellowship-trained and specializes in what they do, meaning that they are experts in every procedure that they perform. If there’s something that I don’t feel that I’m expert in, there’s always someone who is an expert in it within our group. Whether it be something from spine to foot and ankle to sports to shoulder, we really, it all covered. And I like being a part of that group.