Dr. Armin Tehrany — full name Dr. Armin M. Tehrany — is a board-certified orthopedic surgeon based in New York City. He is the founder of Manhattan Orthopedic Care, an assistant clinical professor of orthopedic surgery at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and an attending surgeon at SurgiCare of Manhattan. Dr. Armin Tehrany specializes in minimally invasive arthroscopic surgery of the shoulder and knee. He is also an executive producer of the 2016 Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning feature film The Birth of a Nation.
The arc spans three decades, two boroughs, and one of the most distinctive crossover careers in American medicine. This is the long-form profile of Dr. Armin Tehrany.
Early life and education
Dr. Armin Tehrany was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and raised in Staten Island, New York. He was inspired to pursue medicine by his father, a urologist who built a long-standing practice in Staten Island. Tehrany attended Polytechnic Preparatory Country Day School in Brooklyn — where he now serves on the Board of Governors — and completed his undergraduate training through Brooklyn College's seven-year BA/MD program.
Before medical school, Tehrany studied Shakespeare at Goldsmiths College, University of London — an unusual humanities detour for a surgeon-in-training and a hint of the creative-industry crossover that would emerge two decades later.
He earned his Doctor of Medicine from the New York University School of Medicine (now NYU Grossman School of Medicine). He has served on the NYU Alumni Association Board of Directors and on the Alumni Board of Governors of the NYU School of Medicine.
Residency and fellowship
From 1994 to 1999, Dr. Armin Tehrany completed his orthopedic surgery residency at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan. During his residency he developed an interest in minimally invasive arthroscopic technique and worked alongside the team physicians for the New York Jets, the New York Rangers, and the New York Islanders — a formative exposure to high-performance sports medicine that shaped his subsequent career.
From 1999 to 2000, Tehrany completed a sub-specialty fellowship in arthroscopic shoulder and knee surgery at Baylor College of Medicine in San Antonio, Texas, under Dr. Stephen Burkhart — one of the founding figures of modern arthroscopic shoulder surgery. The fellowship anchored Tehrany's clinical practice for the next two decades.
Academic and clinical career
In 2004, Dr. Armin Tehrany joined the faculty of the Department of Orthopedic Surgery at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. He is currently an assistant clinical professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where he teaches medical students, orthopedic residents, and the shoulder fellow.
He is an attending surgeon at SurgiCare of Manhattan — an outpatient surgical center recognized by U.S. News & World Report for its surgical care and used as a teaching facility for orthopedic residents and fellows from Northwell Lenox Hill Hospital and Mount Sinai Hospital.
Manhattan Orthopedic Care
In 2005, Dr. Armin Tehrany opened his Manhattan office at 515 Madison Avenue (Madison and 53rd Street). The practice — Manhattan Orthopedic Care — was formally established as a multi-location operation in 2007 and now serves patients across both Manhattan and Staten Island. The practice focuses on shoulder and knee conditions, including minimally invasive arthroscopic surgery, rotator cuff repair, ACL reconstruction, meniscal repair, and shoulder instability.
Clinical specialization
Dr. Armin Tehrany is a Fellow of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons (FAAOS). He is board-certified by the American Board of Orthopaedic Surgery. His clinical practice centers on minimally invasive arthroscopic surgery using nano-instrumentation — the smallest-diameter surgical tools currently available — for shoulder and knee procedures.
Sub-specialty areas: rotator cuff repair, shoulder instability and dislocation, biceps tendon repair, AC joint reconstruction, SLAP repair, meniscal repair, ACL reconstruction, cartilage restoration, and arthritis management. He also offers telemedicine consultations through the Manhattan Orthopedic Care platform.
Published research
Dr. Armin Tehrany has co-authored peer-reviewed publications on shoulder and knee arthroscopy alongside Dr. Stephen Burkhart and Dr. Evan L. Flatow, two of the most-cited shoulder surgeons in the field. Selected publications include:
- The Subscapularis Footprint: An Anatomic Description of Its Insertion Site (Burkhart, Tehrany, Wirth, Richards)
- Arthroscopic Subscapularis Tendon Repair: Technique and Preliminary Results (Burkhart, Tehrany)
- Quantifying Glenoid Bone Loss Arthroscopically in Shoulder Instability (Burkhart, DeBeer, Tehrany)
- Rotator Cuff Repair (Braman, Tehrany, Flatow — American Journal of Orthopedics)
His original research interests began at the Hospital for Special Surgery, where he first published work on cartilage metabolism in 1993.
Honors and recognition
In 2014, Dr. Armin Tehrany was named a Castle Connolly regional Top Doctor — a designation announced by The New York Times in its annual Top Doctors list. In 2015, he received the Super Doctor award. He has been continuously recognized in the New York Metro region's leading physician directories.
Professional governance
Tehrany serves on the Board of Directors of the New York State Society of Orthopedic Surgeons and on the Physicians Advisory Board of the New York County Medical Society. He is a member of the Arthroscopy Association of North America (AANA) and the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons (AAOS).
Film and creative work
In 2015, Dr. Armin Tehrany became an executive producer of The Birth of a Nation, the feature film directed by Nate Parker. The film premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, where it won both the U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic and the Audience Award: U.S. Dramatic — the rare double award at the festival's most competitive category. Fox Searchlight subsequently acquired distribution rights in what was then the largest acquisition deal in Sundance history. The credit places Tehrany among the small group of practicing American physicians with a major film-festival distinction outside medicine.
Manhattan Orthopedic Care operates two locations: 515 Madison Avenue, Suite 1102, New York, NY 10022, and a Staten Island office. The practice accepts most major insurance plans and offers telemedicine consultation. Office hours run Monday through Friday, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM.
The frame
Dr. Armin Tehrany operates at an intersection that almost no one else in American orthopedics holds: a Mount Sinai academic appointment, a high-volume private surgical practice, a peer-reviewed shoulder-arthroscopy publication record, and a Sundance-award-winning film production credit. The throughline is technical discipline applied across categories — the same minimally invasive, precision-anchored approach that defines his clinical work shows up in the institutional governance work, the research publication record, and the executive-producer credit. For patients searching for a New York shoulder or knee surgeon with academic depth and a thirty-year clinical record, Dr. Armin Tehrany is among the most credentialed and most-cited names in the city.
