Our physician team is growing, and we are pleased to introduce another new physician, Dr. Aaron Baessler! A board-certified and fellowship-trained orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Baessler practices at our Fishers location. He specializes in the treatment of sports injuries of the shoulder, elbow, knee and hand, and degenerative conditions of the shoulder and elbow. His surgical expertise includes complex shoulder and elbow trauma, total shoulder and reverse total shoulder replacements, fracture care and arthroscopy, including tendon and ligament repair and reconstruction and surgery for instability. He’s been practicing in the Indianapolis area since 2021.
Dr. Baessler grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and says he became interested in medicine when he experienced an injury in college. “I broke my humerus,” Dr. Baessler said. “During the follow-up visits with my orthopedic surgeon, I became interested in orthopedics and eventually started shadowing them and realized it was the area of medicine I wanted to pursue.”
Staying in the Chicago area to pursue medicine, he completed his undergrad at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and earned his doctorate at The Chicago Medical School at Rosalind Franklin University. He moved to Indiana when he matched to the Indiana University School of Medicine for orthopedic residency. “I chose orthopedics because most of the injuries or problems are very tangible, so there’s usually a fix for the problem,” Dr. Baessler said. “Whether the treatment is operative or non-operative, you can almost immediately make patients better, and that’s very gratifying.”
After residency, he chose to further his education and underwent a sports medicine and shoulder fellowship at the University of Tennessee Campbell Clinic in Memphis. “The shoulder is a complex joint and because of that, shoulder injuries are very common as we age, as well as in sports,” Dr. Baessler shared. “With the amount of complexity in the joint, that also means that the injuries can be complex as well as the surgeries, and I enjoy solving tough problems.”
Dr. Baessler says he’s very honest and upfront when it comes to his approach to patient care. “My practice has morphed over the years,” Dr. Baessler said. “I like to provide multiple treatment options on a particular problem and give my opinion on each, but ultimately, I prefer to leave it up to the patient to choose their course of treatment. I try not to force any type of bias on which option they choose, and feel patients tend to do better when they’re in control of the decision.”
Outside of seeing patients, Dr. Baessler is very active in research and publications. In his spare time, he enjoys being with his family and Labrador retrievers, exercising and playing golf. He also claims to be an amateur woodworker and says he hasn’t lost any fingers yet and doesn’t plan to in the future. 😉
To schedule an appointment with Dr. Baessler in our Fishers location, call 800-622-6575 or request an appointment online. Learn more about Dr. Baessler and his approach to patient care in the video below.