Anthony M. Buoncristiani, MD—affectionately known as Dr. Tony, is dual-board certified in orthopedic surgery and sports medicine.
His website states, “His expertise involves the comprehensive management of knee and shoulder injuries/disorders and minimally invasive arthroscopic surgery. He routinely performs trauma surgery and management of all musculoskeletal disorders, both pediatric and adult.”
In this town full of highly active kids and adults, Dr. Tony is a very busy and much sought-after physician.
Dr. Tony Buoncristiani grew up in the Bay Area of California. His mother was and still is a nurse, and his sister also became a nurse. As a child and young adult, he was athletic, goal-oriented, competitive and driven. He attended UC Davis pre-med and medical school at USC through a Navy scholarship (HPSP, or Health Professionals Scholarship Program). He then went to Pensacola Flight Surgeon School and interned at Balboa Naval Hospital in San Diego.
He served five years of active duty with the US Navy and was deployed as a flight surgeon to the Middle East with both Navy and Marine squadrons. For participating in a humanitarian evacuation operation in Eritrea/Ethiopia, he was awarded the Navy Commendation Medal and the prestigious Air Medal.
Following this, Dr. Tony completed his civilian residency in orthopedic surgery at the University of Washington. He met his wife, Carina, there in Seattle. Following that, he participated in a top-notch fellowship program specifically geared toward the concept of sports medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. He worked with the University of Pittsburgh Panthers football team and the NHL’s Pittsburgh Penguins, traveling with the teams and working directly and consistently with the athletes. “Working with professional athletes is a higher level of maintenance and great training,” Dr. Tony says.
So finally—after Washington, California, Pennsylvania and beyond, Dr. Tony settled in Sun Valley in 2006. He had vacationed here in the Valley and loved it, and when he completed his extensive schooling and training, he just started calling around town to find a practice he could join. Del Pletcher took that call because the timing was perfect. Dr. Tony took over Pletcher’s practice and has been on his own since Day One.
Dr. Tony worked out of St. Luke’s for many years but recently moved to his current offices on Second Street South in Ketchum. He truly has a solo practice; he does not have any PAs and sees all his patients himself. And they all have his cell phone number.
Dr. Tony works very closely with the Sun Valley Suns hockey team and the Sun Valley Ski Education foundation ski team—no shortage of injuries with either of those organizations by the very nature of the sports, and he knows all the coaches and all the kids which makes a big difference as far as care—a familiar face is always comforting especially when it’s part of a package that includes excellent skill and competence.
Dr. Tony also brought ImPact from Pittsburgh to the Wood River Valley. He’s very proud of this, as he should be. ImPact is a comprehensive program that reduces the risks associated with concussions by establishing baselines through testing for all athletes. This way, coaches can keep kids within 90% of their baseline.
Dr. Tony is an athlete himself, so he can relate to his patients. He loves mountain biking and competes in endurance biking competitions, including the Colorado Trail Race, which involves over 500 miles of biking and backpacking (“bike-packing” with 70,000 feet of elevation gain). He likes to test his limits physically and mentally, so he’s uniquely qualified to treat and understand the residents and athletes of our town.
Dr. Tony loves the evolutionary aspect of treating a patient from injury to returning that patient to top form. Patients are anxious and undone when an injury forces them out of their wellness routines. He wants to make sure that patients understand what he is doing wrong and how he will fix it—how he and his patient will fix it together—getting people through the whole process.
“I feel for my patients,” he says. “I get it—when you’re used to hiking or biking or skiing for several hours every day—having to stop that is hard—mostly mentally and emotionally. I’m a surgeon, but I’m also a psychologist.”
He’s involved with the whole picture.
“Our minds are powerful things,” he says. “And all humans respond differently to injuries.” Patients should have proper and appropriate expectations, but he also knows he needs to help them stay motivated. He understands how stressful this time can be for patients and their families.
Dr. Tony loves his work and treats people how he would want to be treated. He loves the immediate gratification of the surgery itself. “Reconstruction is literally putting things back together,” he says, but he considers himself a conservative doctor. He follows in the footsteps of Dr. Pletcher, who was also not always inclined to perform surgery if other approaches to the injury would be potentially practical.