Amputee from Graniteville says osseointegration changed his life

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- After an accident with a box truck left him in critical condition, Steve Winograd advises Staten Island amputees to consider osseointegration - a procedure that connects the living bone of the wounded area to an artificial implant.

In a video interview with the Staten Island Advance, Winograd takes viewers through the events that occurred before, during and after the accident that led to his procedure.

A former golf ball-hitting professional from Graniteville, Winograd lived a vigorous life, full of activities like fishing, exercising and traveling. However, his movement was severely restricted after he was struck by a box truck on May 24, 2018.

A stranger put a tourniquet on his leg to stop the bleeding. “And I think without him, I probably wouldn’t have survived,” Winograd said.

He was transported to Richmond University Medical Center, West Brighton, where doctors explained that his left limb below the knee could not be “saved.”

“The pain was so bad I would just shout at the top of my lungs from them changing the dressing,” he recalled.

Winograd was also told that he had leukemia resulting from 9/11. The illness slowed the healing in his leg.

After the healing, Winograd searched for doctors until he landed on Dr. S. Robert Rozbruch, a orthopaedic surgeon with the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan, who conducted the two-hour osseointagration procedure on Winograd. Ever since the surgery, Winograd can do things as if “it was [his] regular leg.”

Thus, Winograd wants to advise others about the benefits of osseointegration, despite its rarity and new emergence. He personally believes that he is the only one on Staten Island who has received the procedure.

“It feels like I’m a kind of a pioneer in my own little area of surgery,” he said. “I would like to get the word out there and I know there’s a lot of other amputees - especially on Staten Island - who probably have never even heard of osseointegration.”

Steve Winograd

Steve Winograd feels "good as new" after his procedure. (Staten Island Advance | Victoria Ifatusin)Victoria Ifatusin

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