As division chief of Orthopaedic Surgery and Sports Medicine at Children’s National Hospital, Matthew Oetgen, M.D., M.B.A., oversees Washington, D.C.’s, most comprehensive program focused on the orthopaedic needs of children. As a practicing orthopaedic surgeon with a busy clinical practice, Dr. Oetgen is an expert in the unique challenges of delivering such care to kids, whose bodies, bones and connective tissue are still growing and changing.
Dr. Oetgen joined the faculty at Children's National in 2009 after completing the Dorothy and Bryant Edwards Fellowship in pediatric orthopaedic surgery and scoliosis at Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children in Dallas, Texas. He became division chief at Children’s National in 2015, and now leads development of innovative clinical and research programs that streamline care for children with complex orthopaedic needs. As the division’s research director, Dr. Oetgen strongly advocates for greater collaboration between clinical service delivery and research to drive improvements to pediatric orthopaedic care.
Under his leadership, Children’s National created the Spinal Fusion Surgical Home, the first of its kind in the U.S. focused specifically on pediatric patients. Launched in 2016, the program has led to significant decreases in average length of stay and patient pain scores for children with idiopathic scoliosis.
Dr. Oetgen has authored more than 60 book chapters and publications and presented at many major conferences in his field both domestically and internationally. He is an active research scientist in the Sheikh Zayed Institute for Pediatric Surgical Innovation, and is a principal investigator on several grant-funded clinical studies. Dr. Oetgen is also a key member of the multidisciplinary clinical trial team that was the first to apply magnetic resonance guided high-intensity focused ultrasound (MR-HIFU) to non-invasively relieve osteoid osteoma tumors in children.
As an associate professor of pediatrics and orthopaedics at the George Washington University (GW), Dr. Oetgen’s expertise and mentorship in pediatric orthopaedics is recognized by his students, peers and colleagues. In 2017, he was elected to the board of directors of the Pediatric Orthopaedic Society of North America (POSNA), one of the world’s largest organizations dedicated to pediatric orthopaedic practice, and he has served as an invited reviewer for some of the pediatric orthopaedic field’s most respected journals.
Dr. Oetgen completed medical training at Georgetown University and residency at Yale University, and also holds three master’s degrees, including a master’s in business administration from GW.