JESUP — The Bone & Joint Institute of South Georgia announces the addition of Amber Aragon, M.D., to its staff.

The orthopedic surgeon will begin seeing patients in BJI’s Hinesville office the first week in August.

She specializes in musculoskeletal complaints, both chronic and sports-related. She uses an arthroscopic approach for the majority of her surgical cases. Aragon spent five years at Winn Army Community Hospital on Fort Stewart, two years of which she served as chief of the orthopedic surgery service. She was deployed to Afghanistan in 2013.

“We are thrilled to have Dr. Aragon join the BJI team,” said orthopedic surgeon J. Lex Kenerly, M.D. “Her experience, both surgical and in the military, makes her an outstanding addition to our practice.”

A native of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, Aragon was valedictorian of her high-school class. She attended the University of Pittsburgh on a full academic scholarship, earned her Bachelor of Science in bioengineering in 2000. Aragon joined the U.S. Army under the Health Professions Scholarship Program. She earned her doctorate from Meharry Medical College in Nashville in 2004, where she graduated first in her class.

Aragon’s orthopedic-surgery residency at Walter Reed Army Medical Center included a dedicated year of research at the National Institutes of Health, studying the biochemical cause of abnormal bone formation in soldiers who sustain traumatic amputation because of improvised explosive devices. This research resulted in multiple publications in peer-reviewed journals.

Aragon performed more than 3,000 surgeries during her residency, the majority of which were on wounded troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

“I’m excited to be a part of the BJI team and look forward to using my expertise to treat patients in need of expert orthopedic care,” she said.