Getting to know Prof Sebastian Magobotha

Prof Sebastian Magobotha (60) likes to get to the bare bones of matters.
As an orthopaedic surgeon for over 20 years, there’s not much he hasn’t seen or done, but he said there’s still plenty more to be discovered.
He works from the Netcare N17 Hospital on a part-time basis. He is the head of the sports unit and deputy head of Department of Orthopedics at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital, while he also serves as a senior lecturer and director of research in orthopedics at the University of the Witwatersrand.

Also read: Getting to know Kerry Wright.

Why did you become an orthopaedic surgeon?
I did my internship in Sebokeng and a lot of the guys I worked with were interested in orthopaedics. I had the most amazing experience with the consultants. That is where my love for orthopaedics started. The reason why I chose orthopaedics is that it’s probably one of those fields where we can quickly fix what is broken. I had a guy come in with a bad fracture of the pelvis and following a surgery he will be walking a day after or so. So it’s one of those fields where you don’t have to wait for a long time for people to get better.

You started working as a doctor in 1986 and since then there’s been huge strides made in the medical field. Has that made your job any easier?
You have to keep up with the times. The one thing with doctors is that you will always have to know your patients. You have to ask their history, you can’t ask the machine for such a task. You have to examine the patient. You can’t ask the machine to do the examination. Yes, we have seen a lot of medical advances. One of them will be the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which has really made our lives easier. I’m actually a sports physician, more a knee surgeon than anything else. Without MRIs it was difficult for us to assess what sort of ligaments in the knee has suffered damaged. Now with the MRI, you know exactly what you’re dealing with.

Also read: Getting to know Marcel Simon

Do you get patients who come to you with a diagnosis from Dr Google?
Yes, I do. People come here and they tell you what’s wrong with them and give you a diagnosis. You need to let them ride and listen to their story because they will say why do you still want to examine me when I know what the problem is? But as doctors, we first listen to the patient and examine them.

What has it been like treating patients during Covid-19?
It was very difficult because you don’t want physical contact, but we took an oath to serve the people. And so I told my staff that you will examine the patient, keep a safe distance and make sure you are well protected. With the medical students, I told them not to touch patients, which was quite challenging because we’re training doctors as well. How do you train a doctor without touching the patient? They don’t know how something feels. So what I told my registrars (doctors studying to become specialists) was if you guys pick up something important, call the students and let them have a look at it.

You talk about constantly learning and keeping up with the times, what are you busy with?
We’ve got a lot of research projects that we’re involved in. Some of that will probably not be concluded by the time I retire, they are long-term projects. We’ve teamed up with other universities for some collaborative research as well as other departments within Wits, such as the Physiotherapy Department. One of the studies we’re busy with is looking at why people get primary arthritis. For example, you have two grannies, both 74, were both teachers and one gets arthritis and the other doesn’t. So there must be a genetic component to the cartilage degeneration. We’re also looking at osteoporosis due to HIV, where we’re looking at if it’s the treatment that’s causing the bone stimulation to drop or is it the virus itself.

Also read: Getting to know Martin Badenhorst

What do you like to do when you’re not working?
We hike regularly and I try to do one big one a year. I also love to read. My wife and I like hitting the deserts like the Okovango Delta and all these parks. We also try to drive to a neighbouring African state once a year. We will go to places like Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Zambia. We would have gone to Malawi last year. We’ve also climbed Mount Kilimanjaro and from there we went to Kenya. I’ve also done the Comrades 10 times. I’m still a bit of a handyman and I like fixing my own things and I like cooking, that gives me a lot of satisfaction. So because there’s four of us in the house, my wife and two children, we each have a chance to cook up a storm. You must go all out. It gives us something to look forward to.

Did any of your children follow in your footsteps and become doctors?
No. My daughter was accepted, but then she changed to law and eventually got her LLB. A few years back she went back to school and is studying at the University of Pretoria. My son is in the medical profession but works for one of the companies that makes spinal implants.

Follow us on our social media platforms: