Renowned hand, wrist surgeon joins Kettering Health

KETTERING — A world renowned hand and wrist surgeon is now making his home in the Miami Valley working for Kettering Health. Dr. Thomas Graham has worked with thousands of professional athletes over the course of his career. Players like Nick Senzel, Phil Mickelson, and Russell Westbrook have turned to Dr. Graham to help them get back up to speed.

Graham is from East Liverpool, Ohio and has both gone to school and worked in state for decades. He’s worked with the Cleveland Indians for years and is celebrating his 25th year in Major League Baseball. He left the Cleveland Clinic to come to Kettering Health and raved about why he wanted to come work in Dayton.

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“If you drove a car today, if you flew on a plane last week, or went to the refrigerator to get a soda you can thank Dayton for that,” Dr. Graham said. “I was so inspired by that as I tried to put the entire state together as a single innovation ecosystem throughout the last 20 years. Dayton was a real nucleus for creative thought. Especially as it pertains to the contributions of Charles Kettering, one of the most prolific and important inventors and innovators as it comes to the history of our country.”

Graham is very fond and fascinated by Charles Kettering and is even collecting memorabilia remarking his home may be like a small museum to Kettering. Graham’s own career reads somewhat like a museum. Growing up on the east side of the state he’s known Lou Holtz, who also is from East Liverpool, and grew up with Arnold Palmer, who was a family friend. He jokes you wouldn’t know it now looking at him but he was a high level athlete himself. Before doing a fellowship at the Mayo Clinic, working at the Cleveland Clinic, and the Congressionally Designated National Hand Center among other stops he got a chance to work up close and personal with some of the world’s elite.

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“Became an exercise physiologist for the Olympic committee in our 84 quadrennial, Los Angeles,” Graham said. “We started to adopt some of the more sophisticated ways to train athletes scientifically. Fortunately some of the ideas I had back then remain relevant today.”

While some may grow up wanting to hoist trophies as an athlete, Graham said he’s wanted to be a hand surgeon since he was 8 years old.

“The first thing I can think of is the hand is our primary instrument of discovery, commerce,” Graham said. “Outside of our face maybe our most personal instrument.”

He recalls watching a news broadcast showing video of an open heart surgery and said most likely were fascinated by the heart but all he could focus on was the fluid artistic ballet of hands doing the procedure.

One thing that Dr. Graham has repeated about his emphasis now and throughout his career is the desire for innovation and learning more about what they can do operating on hands and has been on the cutting edge of the industry for decades.

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The work with pro athletes might stand out to the average person he said that one feeds directly into the other.

“Frankly, my career taking care of professional athletes has been one of the greatest laboratories that I’ve learned and brought things back to the practice of hand surgery that we do everyday for all our neighbors,” Graham said. “It’s really been one of the most fascinating and rewarding parts of my entire career.”

In a career where he’s already amassed hardware, championship rings, and plenty of acclaim there isn’t one particular moment or memory that sticks out to him.

“The multiple moments that you connected to the individuals,” Graham said. “Those who maybe thought their career was threatened and after that first day back they give you a hug or a high five. That I think about when I go to bed and I reflect, it’s many of those. How you’ve gotten to be insinuated in the families of these people and how we still keep track of them and the Christmas cards I still get.”

The next time a player for the Reds, Indians, or even another professional athlete needs to have hand or wrist surgery there’s a good chance that they’ll come to Dayton to be treated by Dr. Graham.

He said over the last six weeks (spanning the end of June to the beginning of August) he’s performed surgery on 25 different athletes.

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