Jeffrey Cella, MD

Continuing a family tradition

For Jeffrey Cella, MD, medicine is a family affair. Two brothers are doctors and his father was Berkshire County’s only oral surgeon. When Dr. Cella himself was trying to decide where to practice, he debated coming home. “I went full circle, at first thinking I wouldn’t come back,” he remembers. “But the big city practice and lifestyle weren’t for me. I realized I wanted an area I knew.”

Dr. Cella earned his medical doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania and did his orthopaedic residency at New York’s Hospital for Special Surgery, before completing a fellowship at the Cleveland Clinic. As a board-certified orthopaedic surgeon, he explains, “I do almost anything in adult orthopaedics that isn’t spine or complicated hand, including hips, knees, ankles, feet, shoulders, elbows, wrists, and hands. I do some pediatrics, mostly injury-related problems. In adults, the majority of injures are mistakes – falling off ladders, walking in the middle of the night without a light on, and other everyday accidents, when suddenly something goes wrong. The majority of my practice deals with hip, knee, shoulder, and hand problems in middle age and up.”

As a veteran doctor, he sees his experience as an important asset. “I’m a strong believer in, first, do no harm. Second, I pursue other treatment options before surgery, when feasible and available. Third, in over twenty-five years I’ve seen a lot of treatment methods in our field come and go. I have repeatedly witnessed that the newest treatments often do not stand up to the test of time. If your results are good, you don’t change just because you come upon a single article that says a new treatment is better.”

Dr. Cella is happy with his decision to return to Berkshire County. “When I go to the supermarket or the hardware store, I see current and former patients all the time. I enjoy it,” he says. “You’re nice to those people and they’re nice to you.” He lives in Lenox where he enjoys baking, cooking, and an active life as a runner, skier, biker, and golfer.