Dr. Emily Schaheen

Orthopedics is a famously complex, mechanical specialty. The work is physical, three-dimensional and demanding in a way that rewards a particular kind of person. Dr. Schaheen’s background in biomedical engineering made her a natural fit.

“You have to love building and thinking about structure and where everything goes to be successful at it,” Dr. Schaheen explains. “It’s a bit self-selecting as a field, because if your brain doesn’t work that way, you won’t enjoy it.”

After her orthopedic surgery residency, Dr. Schaheen completed a fellowship in hand and upper extremity surgery at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. While all orthopedic surgeons are trained to treat the musculoskeletal system, hand surgery requires a specialized focus. Dozens of bones, hundreds of ligaments and a delicate network of nerves and blood vessels all have to work together smoothly every time you grip, pinch, write, type or lift.

“It’s a unique field. It takes a lot of planning, but you also have to do a lot of in-the-moment problem solving. In the OR, you always need a plan A, B and C,” she says.

For Dr. Schaheen, that is part of the appeal: hand surgery is precise, but it is never abstract. The level of detail involved is exactly what makes it so compelling.

At Northeast Georgia Plastic Surgery, Dr. Schaheen occupies a unique role as a hand surgeon. “I always say I’m the square peg,” she jokes. The hand division of the practice, Northeast Georgia Hand, handles trauma cases for the entire region, and she’s the one who takes on the more involved reconstructive work, from complex fractures and nerve repair to vascular injuries and joint replacement. She also performs a variety of elective procedures, treating patients with carpal tunnel, trigger finger, arthritis, ligament injuries and other conditions that affect daily function. One of her favorite procedures is LRTI (ligament reconstruction and tendon interposition), a base-of-thumb reconstruction for basal joint arthritis, which is particularly common in women.

“It’s a debilitating condition, so it’s a very gratifying procedure, very quality-of-life-improving,” she explains. “People typically regain full motion and grip strength, so they can get back to playing the piano, playing pickleball, all the things they enjoy.”

Dr. Schaheen treats patients across the full age spectrum, from young athletes to seniors, and her approach is the same regardless of how a patient ends up in her exam room: highly individualized and tailored to each person’s needs and lifestyle.

“Everyone has different goals, different reasons for coming to see me,” she says. “So the first thing I do with anybody is get to know them a little bit. That helps me understand what those goals are and how we’re going to get there.”

One of the most distinctive parts of Dr. Schaheen’s practice is what she does without an operating room. She performs a range of hand procedures awake, in-office, without general anesthesia or IV sedation.

The technique is called WALANT, short for ‘wide awake local anesthesia, no tourniquet.’ It was pioneered by Canadian hand surgeon Dr. Donald Lalonde and uses a combination of local anesthesia and epinephrine to safely numb the surgical area and control bleeding without a tourniquet. Patients stay awake and walk out the same day without the lingering nausea or grogginess associated with general anesthesia.

“Most people are really happy to do their procedures awake,” she says. “Patients with heart disease or other underlying health conditions especially appreciate it, but honestly just from a convenience standpoint… no fasting, no driver, no bloodwork, none of those logistics are needed.”

The cost difference is also significant. Without hospital or anesthesia fees, a WALANT procedure can be a fraction of the price of the same surgery performed in an operating room. For self-pay patients in the Northeast Georgia area, that matters.

The technique is well established in hand surgery literature, but it isn’t widely offered locally. Dr. Schaheen is one of the few surgeons in the region who performs it routinely.

If there’s a thread that runs through everything Dr. Schaheen does, it’s continuity. Instead of handing patients off to nurses or PAs for follow-up appointments and check-ins, she’s there at every step, from consultation through recovery.

“It may mean we see fewer patients,” she says, “but where we’re maybe lower in quantity, I think we’re higher in quality.”

When the same surgeon who made the intraoperative decisions is also the one watching how the hand heals, it makes it easier to recognize and interpret subtle changes. An impromptu comment about discomfort or a new symptom that wouldn’t have stood out to a different provider on a different day gets noticed. Patients also tend to feel more comfortable asking questions when they’re talking to the person who actually performed their surgery.

It’s an approach that Dr. Schaheen has appreciated when she’s on the other side of the exam table. “I had three kids, and I always liked going to the same OB every time,” she says. “It was comforting to me. That’s how I felt as a patient, and that’s how I think as a doctor.”

When she isn’t in the office or the operating room, Dr. Schaheen is most likely outside. She’s an avid gardener and grows much of her own food. She and her husband built a glass greenhouse on their property a few years ago, where she starts her seedlings every spring.

She also propagates fiddle leaf figs and orchids, which she gives away to family and friends. Her kids help her plant, repot and harvest, and the herbs they grow usually end up in dinner.

“My parents were really big into the environment, and we were raised to appreciate the land,” she says. “I do that with my kids now. It’s really fun to teach them the importance of nature.”

When she’s not gardening, she’s hiking, swimming in the lake or on a jet ski. “Pretty much anything outdoors!”