Dr Frank Connon

“Every hip and knee replacement should be built around the patient in front of me — not a one-size-fits-all technique.”

— Dr Frank Connon

Training and Fellowship

Dr Frank Connon is a Sunshine Coast orthopaedic surgeon with extensive Australian and international training, specialising in muscle-sparing, minimally invasive hip and knee surgery. After completing his Australian training in Sydney, he was awarded the Commonwealth Fellowship to undertake a year of specialist training at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital in London, followed by further training in the direct anterior approach to hip replacement at centres of excellence in France, the US and Australia.

Expertise in Hip and Knee Replacement

Dr Connon is the only Sunshine Coast orthopaedic surgeon routinely using muscle-sparing approaches for both hip replacement (direct anterior approach) and knee replacement (subvastus, quadriceps-sparing approach), and the only Sunshine Coast-based surgeon with international fellowship training in the direct anterior approach. He was one of the first surgeons to bring the quadriceps-sparing (subvastus) approach to knee replacement to the Sunshine Coast, and has now performed over 1,000 subvastus knee replacements, using robotic assistance or patient-specific instrumentation to support accurate implant sizing and positioning. He is a member of the Medacta International Subvastus Working Group, contributing to the ongoing international development of the technique.

Teaching and Publications

Dr Connon’s expertise in hip surgery led to an invitation to write a book chapter on surgical approaches to the hip, published in Controversies in Orthopaedic Surgery of the Lower Limb (Springer, 2021). He teaches Australian orthopaedic registrars at Sunshine Coast University Hospital, and regularly hosts visiting surgeons and trainees who come to learn these techniques from him.

A Personalised Approach to Care

Dr Connon takes the time to understand each patient’s circumstances and goals, discussing the full range of options — including non-surgical and minimally invasive treatments such as exercise, injections, radiofrequency ablation and arthroscopic (“keyhole”) surgery — before working out the right surgical or non-surgical pathway together. While every patient’s plan is tailored to them individually, he is able to offer the direct anterior approach for all routine primary hip replacements and the subvastus approach for all routine primary knee replacements.

Professional Memberships

Dr Connon is a member of the Australian Orthopaedic Association, the Australian Arthroplasty Society, the Australian Medical Association, and the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons.