- May 10, 2016
A new joint can essentially give the patient their life back. It can restore mobility and I think for us humans, mobility is everything. What happens in the arthritic processes that the joint wears out, the cartilage disintegrates and they, unfortunately, have a lot of pain associated with this. Their motion decrease and then thus their function decreases. And very frequently a lot of patients have suffered for many years that tend to get worse and worse with increased stiffness and inability to walk.
What we do in surgery is that we replace the joint, we remove the diseased, cartilage and bone and replace it with artificial bearing surfaces. We have lots of different sizes to maximize or contour the fit almost personally for each patient. These hips and knees can be expected to last 20, maybe in 25 years. We also see a much greater a range of motion ability to the patients and that’s mainly because of the differences in the surgical techniques and the advances we’ve made there.
Also, over these years, when joint replacement first started, it was considered a procedure for elderly patients. Now that we know how long it lasts and how durable it is, the indications have been liberalized to where many younger patients are being done at the reconstruction center. Absolutely fantastic. Surgery in terms of returning quality of life. It takes a patient wakes up and is constantly thinking about their hip, wondering, am I going to get through the day? What am I going to do to circumvent the pain in my hip today? In a new patient who has really returned to absolutely normal function without even concern or thought about their hip. I have no pain anymore. It’s just a blessing. We basically do only hip the knee joint risk replacement over our lifespan. We do literally thousands and thousands of these and there is absolutely no substitute for experience in getting a good result.
