Orthopedic Care in Potomac, Maryland

Potomac sits at the heart of Montgomery County's most active suburban community — a place where weekend mornings start with club lacrosse at Bullis, club soccer at Cabin John Regional Park, and runs along the C&O Canal towpath. The orthopedic injuries we see in patients from Potomac reflect that lifestyle: rotator cuff strains from masters tennis at Congressional Country Club, meniscus tears from cutting and pivoting on the Churchill turf, and chronic knee pain from years of competitive running on River Road's rolling hills.

Maryland Orthopedic Specialists has served Potomac residents since the practice's founding, and the geography is convenient by design. Our Rockville physical therapy facility at 1071 Seven Locks Road — in the Potomac Woods Shopping Center near Walgreens and O'Donnell's Market — is roughly eight minutes from Potomac Village by car, putting post-operative and sports-rehab visits within an easy commute. For surgical consultations, imaging, casting, PRP and biologics, and procedure-room work, our Bethesda office at 6710-A Rockledge Drive is the surgical home for Potomac patients and adds only a few minutes of drive time along Old Georgetown Road or Democracy Boulevard.

We treat the full age spectrum of Potomac athletes. Pediatric and adolescent injuries from Churchill, Wootton, Bullis, Landon, and Holton-Arms — Osgood-Schlatter knee pain, Little League shoulder, ACL tears from cutting sports, growth-plate fractures — make up a significant share of our sports medicine practice. So do the overuse injuries that come with being the kind of adult who plays USTA tennis at the Bethesda Country Club, swims competitively at Cabin John, or runs the Carderock-to-Old Anglers stretch of the towpath several times a week. Our surgeons are fellowship-trained in shoulder, knee, hand, hip, foot/ankle, and spine subspecialties, which means a Potomac patient with a complex injury does not need to be referred outside the practice.

The cultural expectation in Potomac is concierge-grade access. Patients here are accustomed to same-day calls being returned, MRIs being scheduled within a day or two, and second opinions being shared with their primary care concierge practice without friction. We work that way intentionally. Same-day and next-day appointments are routine, especially for acute injuries; communication is direct between our surgeons and your physician of record; and we are in-network with the major commercial plans patients in this area carry, including Aetna, BlueCross BlueShield, Cigna, and United.

Dr. James Gardiner has lived in and served this community for 30 years. He anchors the sports medicine teams with Dr. Christopher Raffo and Dr. John Christoforetti. Together, the team sees a substantial number of Potomac high school athletes — particularly from Churchill and the private school lacrosse and football programs — ACL reconstruction with quadriceps autograft, ACL reconstruction with patellar tendon autografts, meniscus repair, and biologic augmentation procedures like Regeneten. More senior athletes from the community are treated for partial thickness and full thickness rotator cuff tears. Shoulder instability and shoulder labral tears (SLAP and Bankart) are bread-and-butter sports medicine cases for the team — common in the contact-sport and overhead-athlete populations from Churchill, the private schools, and the area's adult tennis and swimming communities — and arthroscopic labral repair and stabilization are routinely performed by all three sports medicine surgeons. Dr. John Christoforetti's hip preservation practice draws Potomac patients dealing with FAI and labral tears, often discovered after years of misdiagnosed "groin strains" in adult tennis, soccer, and golf players. For hand, wrist, and elbow injuries — common in this community's tennis and golf populations — Dr. Peter Fitzgibbons offers fellowship-trained upper-extremity care. Dr. Gary Feldman rounds out the team caring for the area's running community foot and ankle needs.

Not every Potomac patient needs surgery, and most of what we do is non-operative. A meaningful share of the practice is image-guided injection — corticosteroid, hyaluronic acid, and platelet-rich plasma — combined with structured physical therapy at our Rockville facility and progressive return-to-sport protocols built around the patient's actual goals. We work closely with the area's club coaches, school athletic trainers, and personal trainers when a patient is ready to return to activity, because a Potomac runner training for the Marine Corps Marathon or a high school lacrosse goalie heading into the spring season needs more than "you're cleared" — they need a return-to-play plan that matches what they are actually being asked to do.

If you live in Potomac and an injury is keeping you out of the sport, work, or life you love, getting seen quickly should not be the hardest part of recovery. We make sure it isn't.