Declan Diestel, BA

Biography

Declan Diestel is a first-year medical student at UMass Chan Medical School who is interested in orthopedic surgery, especially upper extremity surgery. Before medical school, he spent two years as a Clinical Research Supervisor at Boston Bone and Joint Institute under Dr. Andrew Jawa and Dr. Jacob Kirsch. He has contributed to 13 peer-reviewed publications, with 5 more under review. The published work includes a first-author JSES study on returning to weightlifting after shoulder arthroplasty. One of the papers under review is a multicenter machine learning analysis of the patient, implant, and surgical factors associated with acromial and scapular spine fractures after reverse total shoulder arthroplasty. He also co-authored a chapter in Rockwood and Matsen’s The Shoulder and more than 20 podium and poster presentations. At BBJI he maintained a high-volume shoulder arthroplasty database and coordinated multicenter projects with the ASES research groups. His collaborations reached as far as Dr. Jean-David Werthel in France, and he worked closely with New England Baptist Hospital shoulder and elbow fellows, including Dr. Austin Middleton and Dr. Kathleen Leinweber. His work included IRB submissions, REDCap and OBERD data pulls, statistical analysis (propensity-matched comparisons and logistic regression), writing manuscripts, and managing journal submissions. He also secured BBJI’s approval as a site for a DePuy Synthes FDA IDE randomized trial and served as the liaison between BBJI, New England Baptist Hospital, and Johnson & Johnson.