Meet Our Team at the IJRR

The team of the IJRR includes members and staff of the Institute as well as staff of the Washington Joint Restoration Clinic, which is a department of Washington Hospital.

Comprehensive Care

The IJRR team provides comprehensive care for joint replacement patients, including total hip, knee and shoulder replacements, joint replacement revisions, bilateral knee replacement, unicompartmental knee replacement, anterior hip and reverse total shoulder replacement. At the IJRR, we offer the very best care from our most talented team. Their knowledge and expertise will help you get back on your feet. Fast.

Expert Team

A team of joint care specialists which includes John Dearborn, MD, and Alexander Sah, MD, for hip and knee reconstruction, as well as shoulder disorders specialist John Costouros, MD, are part of the Institute for Joint Restoration and Research. Our surgeons are among the world's best in joint replacement. They perform hundreds of successful total joint replacements each year using the most advanced surgical techniques and technology available. Our nurses' and occupational and physical therapists' patient-centered, compassionate approach to healing ensures a full return to normal, active living. Whether "normal living" for you means a return to the workplace or an active lifestyle, our rehabilitation program is tailored to get you back on track in short order.

John T. Dearborn, MD, Co-Medical Director

John T. Dearborn, MD, is the founder of the joint replacement program at Washington Hospital Healthcare System and serves as the co-medical director of the Institute for Joint Restoration and Research. He earned two undergraduate degrees from Stanford University (Phi Beta Kappa), and then graduated from the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, earning the Alpha Omega Alpha distinction in his third year. He completed his orthopaedic residency at UCSF and joined the medical staff of Washington Hospital in 1997 after fellowship training in joint replacement at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

In 2001, Dr. Dearborn collaborated with a handful of U.S. surgeons to develop and teach a less invasive hip replacement technique that facilitated faster recovery. With this innovative method, Dr. Dearborn and his colleagues transformed hundreds of thousands of patients' early outcomes following hip surgery. He took a team from Washington Hospital to Taiwan as a visiting professor and performed the first partial knee replacements in that country. In 2004, he joined leading surgeons in implementing minimally invasive total knee surgery, which substantially reduces the recovery time from this procedure. He has trained hundreds of other surgeons in this technique at teaching courses and through surgeon visitation at our facility.

In the past 10 years, Dr. Dearborn has continued to advance the field of joint replacement as a thought-leader, teaching dozens of courses at venues all over the world, reviewing paper submissions for the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, managing his own clinical research and substantial implant registry, and working with leading orthopaedic companies to design and test innovative implant designs. His outcomes from the past 25 years and over 15,000 procedures are widely referenced and emulated. A current focus is emulating his advanced hospital rehabilitation protocols in the ambulatory surgery environment.

Alexander Sah, MD, Co-Medical Director

Alexander Sah, MD

Alexander Sah, MD, currently serves as Director of the Outpatient Joint Replacement Program and as Co-Director of the Institute for Joint Restoration and Research at Washington Hospital in Fremont, CA. He was born at Washington Hospital and raised in Fremont. He earned his medical degree, graduating Magna Cum Laude, from Thomas Jefferson Medical College in PA. He then went on to complete his residency at the Harvard Combined Orthopaedic Program and then a joint reconstruction fellowship at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. Dr. Sah specializes in total knee and total hip replacement, and developed the outpatient program in Fremont in 2014. He is the only surgeon performing anterior hip replacement at IJRR. He has expertise in partial knee replacement and is the United States lead investigator for one of the newest partial knee prosthesis. He teaches courses and lectures on this procedure, as well as on advanced pain management techniques and outpatient joint replacement.

Dr. Sah is a member of leadership committees for the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, the California Orthopedic Association, and the American Association of Hip and Knee Surgeons. In 2016, he was selected as 1 of 10 orthopedic surgeons in the nation to the prestigious AAOS Leadership Fellows Program. He is a multi-year recipient of the “Best of Fremont” Doctor and Orthopedic Surgeon Awards and named a California Top 10 Orthopedic Surgeon, among many other honors. He also serves as a reviewer for Clinical Orthopedics and Related Research and an editor for Techniques in Orthopaedics. Dr. Sah is widely published and is an esteemed speaker, having presented at more than 50 meetings and conventions across the United States.

John G. Costouros, MD, Medical Director of Shoulder Surgery

John Costouros, MD, joined the medical staff of Washington Hospital in 2020. Dr. Costouros has devoted his entire career in becoming an expert in the comprehensive treatment of all disorders affecting the shoulder — from sports injuries, to fractures, rotator cuff tears, instability problems, arthritis and failed prior surgeries. As a prior full-time member of the Stanford Orthopedic Surgery Faculty, he has trained hundreds of surgeons from around the world. He has developed and shared the very latest advancements, devices and techniques.

He is board-certified by the American Board of Orthopaedic Surgery and a Fellow of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons and the American College of Surgeons. He has a certificate of added qualification (CAQ) in sports medicine. Dr. Costouros graduated with honors from Stanford University and attended medical school, internship and residency at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He completed fellowships in shoulder surgery and sports medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital as well as the University of Zürich and Balgrist Hospital in Switzerland. He has been a pioneer in reverse total shoulder replacement and stemless total shoulder replacement as well as novel minimally invasive arthroscopic techniques. Dr. Costouros is past president of the UCSF Leroy C. Abbott Orthopaedic Society, the Northern California Orthopaedic Society, and the Northern California Chapter of the Western Orthopaedic Association. He is also an active member of the prestigious American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons (ASES), the Arthroscopy Association of North America (AANA), the European Society of Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons (SECEC), ISAKOS, the Western Orthopaedic Association (WOA) and has been a leader with the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS).

His research is focused on clinical outcomes following traditional and reverse shoulder joint replacement, stemless shoulder arthroplasty, novel arthroscopic techniques, and the use of augmented and virtual reality and robotics to enhance surgical precision and improve outcomes in shoulder surgery. Finally, he has been involved in multiple FDA clinical trials and the design of several FDA-approved shoulder joint replacement devices including most recently the first stemless reverse total shoulder replacement available in the USA.

Dr. Bryant Bonner

John Costouros, MD Dr. Bonner was born and raised in Sacramento before heading to Boston for college. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University and his medical degree from Harvard Medical School. Dr. Bonner completed his orthopaedic surgery residency at the Harvard Combined Orthopaedic Residency Program, which provided the opportunity to work at Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Dr. Bonner pursued further specialized fellowship training at the Hofmann Arthroplasty Adult Reconstruction/Arthroplasty Fellowship Program in Salt Lake City, Utah, where he focused on minimally invasive hip and knee replacement, complex and revision hip and knee replacements, as well as shoulder replacements.

Much of the success of the IJRR is driven by the multidisciplinary teams of physicians, nurses, therapists, and physician assistants who provide integrated care for every patient. Drs. Dearborn and Sah direct their teams, which include:

Dedicated, seasoned surgical teams in the operating room
Physician assistants, who work in surgery and provide care on the IJRR unit
Registered nurses specializing in the post-surgical needs of joint replacement patients
Physical therapists trained in hip and knee rehabilitation using the IJRR approach
Occupational therapists who educate patients on safely resuming daily living
A case manager coordinating home care after the patient leaves the IJRR
IJRR alumni patients who volunteer on the unit and provide guidance to patients on what to expect after they go home.