David P. Green, M.D.
A native Texan, Dr. Green grew up in El Paso but went to New York City for his orthopedic and hand surgery training.
In 1970, he joined the full-time faculty of the Department of Orthopaedics at the Medical School in San Antonio. For eight years, he was the Coordinator of Resident Training, also serving as Chief of the Hand Surgery Service.
While at the medical school, Dr. Green co-authored, with Dr. Charles A. Rockwood, a two-volume textbook on fractures that is now in its 8th edition and is the standard reference book on this subject. It is used in all orthopedic residency training programs throughout the country.
In 1978, he left medical school and became the first surgeon in San Antonio to devote his practice entirely to hand and upper extremity surgery.
Dr. Green has a special interest and extensive experience in treating athletic injuries of the hand and wrist. He was the team physician for the Clark High School football team and continues to treat high school and college athletes from the San Antonio area and surrounding communities.
He was the hand surgery consultant for the San Antonio Spurs and has treated numerous professional athletes, including members of the Dallas Cowboys, world-class gymnasts, professional rodeo cowboys, and golfers on the PGA tour.
Dr. Green has edited a comprehensive textbook entitled Operative Hand Surgery(now in its 7th edition), which is used not only throughout the entire United States but by hand surgeons in virtually every country in the world. Because of this book, Dr. Green has an international reputation in hand surgery and has been invited as a guest speaker to many foreign countries. He is also a past president of the American Society for Surgery of the Hand, and in 1997 was named the Distinguished Alumnus of his own residency training program, The New York Orthopaedic Hospital. He was also named the 2016 Distinguished Alumnus of his alma mater, Baylor College of Medicine. In 2019, the Bexar County Medical Society honored Dr. Green with their Golden Aesculapius Lifetime Service Award.
Dr. Green was an enthusiastic skier for about 50 years, but his wife and daughters decided he should quit as he reached his late 80s, and he is also a dropout bluegrass banjo picker. After spending 35 years writing and editing orthopaedic and hand surgery texts, he turned his attention to non-medical books. Twenty-one of these have been published, the most popular being Place Names of San Antonio (2002), which reveals stories behind the names of nearly 1000 streets, parks, schools, buildings, etc. in Bexar and surrounding counties. A 3rd edition was published in 2011. Facing retirement himself, he also wrote Planning Ahead, Successful Retirement for the Type A Personality (2010).
He is an avid student of history and has several of his books focused on World War II: 1) Hitler’s Money Trail (2015); 2) Rudolf Hess’ Mission. The Flight That Might Have Changed History; 3) Plague in the Pacific. How Japan’s Unit 731 Might Have Won the War (2017); What Ifs of World War II (2021 and The War That Might Have Been (2026). All of these books and about a dozen more can be found on his author page on Amazon.com – David P. Green, MD
check out our latest blog posts & announcements featuring dr. green
