IT band surgery

I totally understand your frustration!  Most surgeons won't touch that surgery with a 10 foot pole!  It doesn't have the best reputation as being successful--less than 20% success rate as I recall.  Besides, conservative methods usually work and if they don't a lot of docs will just tell you to stop running.  But at least the surgeon I went to in Boulder has made a bit of a hobby of improving the surgery.  He's added his own little "tweaks" that has made it more successful in his patients.  At the time I had my surgery he had performed it 50-60 times in the previous 5 years.  I was living in Rapid City then and couldn't find a doctor who had done more than 1-4 in the previous 5 years!  I had to beg and plead with my insurance but finally talked them into sending me to Boulder.

Our very own Dr. Sue on BT (Socks) is an orthopedic surgeon in Tampa.  I'd track her down for recommendations in your area.  Heck, she's a mod in this forum and she may have already beaten me to a response.

If she can't help you then get thee to the Boulder Center for Sports Medicine!  I saw Dr. Andy Pruitt there and he is the one that pretty much said I was a candidate for surgery.  He isn't a SURGEON but he's a biomechanics expert.  He recommended two doctors and the name of the second one escapes me at the moment but the one that did my surgery was Dr. Steven Paul of Boulder Orthopedics.

I have another friend on this forum that had the surgery in Pennsylvania and she seems to have had success with it as well.  I'll pimp her to come find this thread.

Oh, I almost forgot.  I had one surgeon tell me, "There is a surgery for this.  But I would have to open the book the day of the surgery to learn how to do it."  SO not kidding...so, yeah...I really do feel your pain!  I told that guy I would pass for now and keep working conservative methods.

I had ITBS for 1 to 1.5 years and went to the best ortho in town to be evaluated for the IT surgery, and he refused.  His advice: if it hurts, don't do it.  Very tough advice, but I ended up quitting running for a few years and started up very very slowly with TONS of stretching.  I've been running for 2 years now and have a touch of ITBS in my hips, but none in my knees.

What other sorts of therapies have you tried?  For my, the chiro did the most for me.  More than PT, cortizone shots, orthodics.  I'm currently seeing a sports chiro and doing trigger point therapy, which seems to be doing the trick.

And every time I bring up the fact that I tried to get the IT surgery to a medical professional, the response is always relief with a "I'm so glad the refused to do it."

Hey, I had another helpful thought.

When I had my ITB release the surgeon also did a scope.  I had knee pain for SO long we wanted to be sure there wasn't some other cause we were missing.

Hey, if you're already out on the table and insurance will pay for it, why not?

They DID find a little work to do in there...nothing hugely serious but potentially helpful...the biggest being they did a "mini" lateral release during the scope.  Just nicked a few tight tendons (I think tendons) that were skewing my patella.  Could also have been causing my pain...since we did both surgeries on the same day we'll never know for sure.  But at least I got everything done in ONE day and only had to recover ONCE.  Plus only paid the hospital once!