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The Los Angeles area medical center where Tiger Woods underwent surgery following a roll-over crash that nearly killed him is one of the busiest trauma centers in the western US with “ultramodern” operating rooms and cutting-edge, robotic technology.
The Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, a public hospital under Los Angeles County’s Department of Health Services, boasts a surgery department with 13 divisions that provides “first class surgical care” for all types of patients, their website states.
Four years ago, the hospital opened 16 new “ultramodern operating rooms” that are “fully equipped for high-level trauma management” like the care Woods required when he was admitted on Tuesday.
The golf legend was speeding down a dangerous stretch of road in the tony Rolling Hills Estates section of Los Angeles Tuesday morning when he hit a median, lost control of his luxury SUV and flipped multiple times before his car landed in a patch of shrubbery.
Were it not for the steely exterior of the Genesis GV80 he was driving, and his seatbelt, Los Angeles authorities said the crash could have easily been fatal.
Instead, Woods walked away with a shattered ankle and two broken legs that required “emergency surgery” by the hospital’s orthopedic trauma specialists, led by Dr. Louis Kwong, a Harvard-trained expert in the field, according to the infirmary.
“Comminuted open fractures affecting both the upper and lower portions of the tibia and fibula bones were stabilized by inserting a rod into the tibia. Additional injuries to the bones of the foot and ankle were stabilized with a combination of screws and pins,” chief medical officer Dr. Anish Mahajan said in a statement.
“Trauma to the muscle and soft-tissue of the leg required surgical release of the covering of the muscles to relieve pressure due to swelling.”
The injuries could derail Woods’s career, experts told The Post Wednesday, and he could even have trouble walking again.
Following the surgery, Woods was “awake, responsive and recovering in his hospital room,” his charity said in a statement, and was likely munching on lite and healthy hospital fare, according to a former patient who underwent surgery at the same facility.
“It was nothing but healthy foods, apple juice to drink, water, jello, wheat bread,” said the patient, who only identified himself as Tristan and was admitted to the hospital in 2019 after he was stabbed at a party.
“The stay at the hospital was more than perfect, the nurses were very helpful with everything, the doctor and whole staff took care of me well. Couldn’t ask for a better hospital to spend the recovery days at.”
The medical center, which is currently at 21% capacity with COVID-19 patients, Los Angeles Times data shows, was the first hospital in the western US to procure the latest generation of the “da Vinci robot,” which allows for non-invasive, robotic surgeries.
They’ve performed over 250 robotic cases spanning colorectal, thoracic, surgical oncology, urology, and hepatobiliary disciplines and were the first hospital in the region to perform a robotic kidney transplant, the website states.
Harbor-UCLA is a top teaching hospital that offers one of the most esteemed medical programs in the country for budding doctors.
Mahajan, the infirmary’s chief medical officer and a practicing internist, previously served as a White House Fellow in the Obama Administration in the Office of Management and Budget where he worked on healthcare reform and other health policy strategy and regulation.
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