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Surgical Record

The Surgical Record in Numbers

Hee Seung Nam, MD, Orthopedic Surgeon · March 2023 to October 2026 · Updated

I compiled the 1,040 operations I performed as the primary surgeon, exactly as recorded in the hospital's operating register. I want to show in numbers which areas, with which operations, and which people I have treated. It contains no personal information such as patients' names or registration numbers.

1,040 operationsperformed as primary surgeon
3 hospitalsBusan, Bupyeong and Incheon Himchan Hospitals
8–104 yearsage of the people operated on (average 59)
132 operationsrobotic-arm-assisted knee replacements

By year and by hospital

  • 2023Busan Himchan HospitalSpine and joint specialty hospitalFrom March214 operations
  • 2024Busan Himchan HospitalSpine and joint specialty hospital186 operations
  • 2025Bupyeong Himchan HospitalSpine and joint specialty hospital277 operations
  • 2026Incheon Himchan General HospitalGeneral hospitalThrough October363 operations

I spent three years in a spine and joint specialty hospital and one year in a general hospital. In 2026, after I moved to a general hospital that sees many trauma patients, fracture surgery rose sharply. Fracture operations, which were 67 in all of 2025, were 146 in the 10 months of 2026.

Where I operated

A figure showing the number of operations by body region as circle sizes over a human outlineShoulder and upper arm145 casesElbow and forearm51 casesHand & Wrist204 casesHip and thigh54 casesKnee and leg374 casesFoot and ankle206 cases
Circle size is proportional to the number of operations at each site. Each operation was counted under one main site.

The knee and leg were most common at 374. Joint replacement, arthroscopy and cartilage treatment are all included here.

Next were the foot and ankle (206) and the hand and wrist (204). These are sites where fractures and ligament injuries from bracing a fall or twisting are common.

The shoulder and upper arm account for 145, mostly arthroscopic rotator cuff repair and fractures of the humerus and clavicle.

What operations I did

The bars show the total number, and the small graph on the right shows the change by year from 2023 to 2026.

  • Fracture and dislocation operations

    Broken bones are set and fixed with plates, screws and rods. The hand and wrist (84) and the foot and ankle (72) were most common. Related column: Treatment options for tibial shaft fractures →

    274 operations

  • Joint replacement

    Knee 135 (132 of them with robotic-arm assistance), hip 25, shoulder 2.

    162 operations

  • Arthroscopic surgery

    Operations done by passing a camera through small openings. Knee 72, shoulder 69, and 9 for the ankle, wrist and others. Related column: A meniscus root tear seen through the arthroscope →

    150 operations

  • Infection and wound treatment

    Operations that wash out an inflamed area and drain pus, suture deep wounds and skin grafts and so on.

    123 operations

  • Hardware removal

    Operations that remove plates or screws after the bone has healed. This category in the register also includes 16 operations such as removal of foreign bodies or calcium. Related column: Do you have to remove the metal plate in your body? →

    119 operations

  • Lump and tumor excision

    Lumps such as ganglion cysts, lipomas and epidermoid cysts are removed and sent for biopsy. Related column: A lump you can feel: lipoma or sarcoma? →

    76 operations

  • Autologous bone marrow stem cell injection (BMAC)

    A procedure in which cells collected from the patient's own bone marrow are placed into a knee with cartilage damage; I did 70 of them in Busan.

    71 operations

  • Tendon, ligament and nerve surgery

    Trigger finger, carpal tunnel syndrome, Achilles tendon repair, ankle ligament reconstruction and so on.

    51 operations

  • Osteotomy and others

    Osteotomy to straighten a bent bone, ingrown toenail surgery and so on.

    14 operations

Who I operated on

  • 324%Under 20
  • 7510%Ages 20–39
  • 23130%Ages 40–59
  • 35146%Ages 60–79
  • 7410%80 and over

Ages 60–79 were most common, and those 80 and over were 74 (about 10%). There were also 12 people over 90 and 21 children and adolescents under 18. Men (385) and women (378) were about equal. Age and sex are based on the 763 operations for which this information was recorded.

What lies behind the numbers

The number of operations does not directly speak to skill. Cases where I advised not operating, even for the same disease, are not in these numbers, and such judgments are often harder than operating.

But each of these 1,040 operations has a photo folder, and after the folder's name there is a short note such as “next time, like this.” I believe those notes, more than the numbers, make the next patient's operation a little better. A surgeon's “I should have...” notes →

About this record

  • Source: operations recorded with Hee Seung Nam as the primary surgeon in each hospital's operating room register. Busan Himchan Hospital (March 2023 to December 2024), Bupyeong Himchan Hospital (2025), Incheon Himchan General Hospital (January to October 2026).
  • Classification: each operation was classified as one main operation by the name of the operation. Even when several procedures were done at once, it was counted as one, and some numbers can differ a little depending on the classification criteria.
  • Age and sex: the 2025 records do not have this item, so the figures are based on 763 operations from 2023, 2024 and 2026.
  • Personal information: nothing that could identify a person, such as names, registration numbers and operation dates, is included.
  • This page is meant to describe my clinical experience; it does not guarantee treatment results and is not for comparison with other physicians or medical institutions.