Dr. Brophy is a Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery, Chief of the Sports Medicine Service and Director of the Orthopaedic Clinical Research Center at the Washington University School of Medicine, as well as the Chief Medical Officer and orthopedic surgeon for Major League Soccer St. Louis City SC, committed to patient care and research. A former collegiate and professional athlete, his clinical practice focuses on the treatment of shoulder and knee injuries in patients from all sports and walks of life. Dr. Brophy has been named to the St. Louis Best Doctors since 2009 and a Castle Connolly Top Doctor since 2019.
He pursues research as a means of improving patient care and outcomes, having authored or co-authored over 330 peer reviewed articles to date, and has received a number of research related distinctions, including the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine Cabaud Award in 2022 and 2015 and NCAA Award in 2011, the American Journal of Sports Medicine Systematic Review Award in 2019 and the Orthopaedic Research and Education Foundation’s 2018 Career Development Award for his research related to ACL tears. He is Vice Chair of the Musculoskeletal Committee for the National Football League (NFL), was the program chair for the 2018 American Orthopaedic Association annual meeting and served as a member at large on the Board of Directors of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) from 2016-8. Dr. Brophy is the Deputy Editor for Sports Medicine for the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, a member of the editorial board of the American Journal of Sports Medicine and co-chair of the AAOS Clinical Practice Guideline (CPG) on Acute Meniscal Pathology, having recently served as co-chair of the AAOS CPG Updates for Anterior Cruciate Ligament Tears and Non surgical management of Knee Osteoarthritis. He was the Director of the Orthopaedic Surgery Sports Medicine Fellowship at the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery in the Washington University School of Medicine from 2018-2022. In addition to his role with St. Louis City SC, he is a team physician for the St. Louis Blues and St. Louis Surge and has also worked with the former St. Louis Rams (NFL) and St. Louis Athletica (WPS).
Dr. Brophy has undergraduate degrees in Economics and Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, where he played on the men’s soccer team, earning All Conference Honors during his senior season. While completing a master’s degree in Industrial Engineering at Stanford University, he played for two national championship teams in the United Soccer League (1992 and 1996). He subsequently enrolled in medical school at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis as a recipient of a Washington University School of Medicine Distinguished Alumni Scholarship. He received numerous academic awards during medical school, including Alpha Omega Alpha national medical honor society recognition, before entering orthopedic surgery residency at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, NY. He stayed at the Hospital for Special Surgery for a fellowship in sports medicine and shoulder surgery, where he had the opportunity to serve an assistant team physician with the New York Giants (NFL) and New York Red Bulls (MLS).
After completing his fellowship, he returned to the Washington University School of Medicine to join the division of sports medicine in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery with a clinical focus on shoulder and knee injuries. In the shoulder, he has a particular interest in the treatment of shoulder instability, labral tears and rotator cuff tears. In the knee, he specializes in the treatment of meniscus, articular cartilage and ligament injuries, including ACL tears, PCL tears and multi-ligament knee injuries and dislocations.
In 2008, he was a traveling fellow with the International Cartilage Research Society, learning from renowned articular cartilage surgeons in various centers throughout Europe. The next year, he was an American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons (AAOS)/American Orthopaedic Association (AOA) North American Traveling Fellow, hosted by leading academic orthopedic surgery centers in the United States and Canada. He was selected as an American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine (AOSSM)-European Society for Sports Traumatology, Knee Surgery and Arthroscopy (ESSKA) Traveling Fellow in 2012 to visit expert sports medicine, arthroscopy, knee and shoulder surgeons in Spain, Holland, Luxembourg, Germany, France, Italy and Switzerland. In the spring of 2015, he was selected as an AOA American-British-Canadian (ABC) Traveling Fellow, touring prominent orthopedic surgery centers in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.
In 2010, he earned an Orthopaedic Research Society-Orthopedic Research and Education Foundation (OREF) Travel Award in Research Translation and a Young Investigator Travel Award to the AOSSM/NIH Post-Joint Injury Osteoarthritis Conference. He was awarded an OREF Young Investigator Research Grant to study the metabolic activity of the meniscus as a potential marker for and predictor of osteoarthritis in 2011, and the 2013 AOSSM/Sanofi Biosurgery Osteoarthritis Grant for his study, “Molecular Profiling of Meniscus and Articular Cartilage in Knees With and Without Osteoarthritis to Identify Candidate Genes for Therapeutic Intervention”. In 2011, he was awarded the AOSSM NCAA Research Award for a study looking at the effect of meniscal and ACL surgery on knee articular cartilage in football athletes. In 2012, he was recognized with the Lee T. Ford Award for academic achievement from the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery in the Washington University School of Medicine. The NFL Physicians Society awarded him the Arthur C. Rettig Award, for academic excellence in research to advance the health and safety of NFL players, in 2015. The same year he was awarded the AOSSM Cabaud Award for research studying the metabolic activity of meniscus and cartilage in knees, which he won again in 2022 for research on the proteomics of synovial fluid from knees with ACL tears. In 2023, he received the American Journal of Sports Medicine Podcast award for a study on meniscal root tears. He has received Excellence in Education awards from the Washington University Department of Orthopaedic Surgery in 2016 and 2020.
He has been a co-author on various studies recognized with the AAOS Kappa Delta Award, the Association of Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons’ Neer Award, the AOSSM O’Donoghue and Cabaud Awards, the Hip Society Otto Aufranc Award and the NFL Physicians Society Arthur C. Rettig Award as well as multiple best poster awards. In conjunction with his sports medicine partners, he participates in multi-center research efforts including the Multicenter Orthopaedic Outcomes Network (MOON) ACL study, MOON Shoulder Group, Multicenter ACL Revision Study (MARS), and Meniscal Tear With Osteoarthritis Research (MeTeOR) study, which have won a number of research awards for their collective work.
He serves as a peer reviewer for a number of orthopedic surgery journals, including The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, The American Journal of Sports Medicine, Journal of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery, the Bone and Joint Journal, and the Journal of Orthopaedic Research. He currently serves, or has served, on committees for several professional organizations, including the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgery, the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine, the American Orthopaedic Association and the Orthopaedic Research Society.