- March 29, 2017
I’m Kenneth Gustke MD. I’m a orthopedic surgeon at the Florida Orthopaedic Institute and I’ve been in practice here for 35 years. Prior to that, I was at the University of South Florida college of medicine in the department of orthopedic surgery, and I’m a clinical professor at the University as well. So my practice is basically hip and knee arthritis surgery which for the most part is doing total knee replacement surgery and total hip replacement surgery. Total hip replacement surgery is probably the most successful operative intervention we have in all of medicine. It has a, between a 90 to 95% success rate in terms of relieving pain. When Mr. Scott Brooks first presented to me, he was obviously complaining of right hip pain, so he presented with the pain in his groin, which is most consistent with an arthritic hip. We then obtained an x-ray of his hip and then again demonstrated where his hip joint had no cartilage remaining. You can see on the other side, which is normal in him, he’s got a nice space where there’s the normal amount of cartilage present. And then on his right side, there’s no cartilage remaining.
When I first went to a Florida Orthopaedic, I did an X-Ray. And afterwards I came back and I saw one surgeon who basically told me it was going to be pain management and then eventually a hip replacement. And I’d asked him about do they have any kind of surgery to be less evasive that I was reading online in order for me to protect my muscles. So hopefully I can get back out into the surf. My whole life I’ve done nothing but been active. And surfing was a lifestyle for me and I really didn’t want that to end. Fortunately for me Florida Orthopaedic with all the resources, they had a doctor there that was going to be able to provide a surgery for me that would probably help me get back in the water. So I just needed them to do all they could so I could get back to where I wanted to be.
Hip replacements have two different parts. You have the thermal stem and you have the socket and they’re placed in the hip like this and you can see there is no attachment between the ball and the socket. So if the hip is not perfectly balanced and the parts aren’t put in absolutely perfectly, then the hip can dislocate by coming on a socket. And in order for us as a surgeon to try to lessen the chances of the hip dislocating, we need to put the parts in exactly perfectly. So we align the socket in the stem in the patient so that they have the maximum range of motion that we want the patient to go through without having an impingement in potential for dislocation. The other is that we want to reconstruct his anatomy as close as possible. So that means you can see how close the to the pelvis. Here. Some patients it’s closer, some patients is further away and we want to reproduce their length because if we get their length perfect and their offset perfect. There’s less chance that the bones themselves will impinge on the other bone, the femur against the pelvis. And also cause a dislocation. So it requires very diligent surgical technique and choice of implants and the placement of the implants. It gets this optimal range of motion to lessen the chance for component on component or bone on bone.
I felt real confident. The staff was wonderful. They were very professional. They were polite. Went through the whole process and I came out and I went through rehab. I did everything they asked me to. And lo and behold, I gradually got to the point where I was able to get back to the beach. And I was, I can say right now is I’m extremely elated. As you can see today, there is a groundswell coming in and I intend on paddling out and surfing all day.