Hip Replacement Surgery, Great unsung advance Options

[stocks]

He sawed off the top of my thigh bone, stripped away one by one the layers of muscle and cartilage around the joint, smoothed the pelvic socket above the leg and installed a precision-machined titanium and plastic prosthesis to replace the discarded joint. Then the surgeon reassembled the whole upper leg, reattaching muscle and cartilage as necessary.

It took roughly two hours to do all that while I lay unaware on the operating table. He did it all through a modest five-inch incision, with so little resulting bleeding that I didn't need a drop of the blood I had donated a week or so earlier, just in case.

More than 238,000 people got their hips replaced in the United States in 2005, according to the most recent statistics of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons. The technique itself is a product of medical globalization, with one of its first successful realizations achieved in 1960 by a Burmese surgeon, San Baw, who replaced a fractured joint in an 83-year-old Buddhist nun. San Baw, who was head of surgery at the Mandalay General Hospital at a time when Burma was still a member of the world, used elephant ivory for the artificial hip.

The technique was developed and changed a good deal by a British surgeon, John Charnley, who worked out of a small rural hospital. New low-friction materials were developed so that by now, according to my surgeon, I can pretty much count on mine lasting as long as I do.

A friend of mine in the medical field - and generally a strong critic of the way American medicine works - says that hip replacement surgery is one of the great unsung advances. It's up there with pain-free dentistry among the medical sciences that have been slowly improved over the years, changing our lives without often inspiring the sense of gratitude that they should.


http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/12/30/america/letter.php

This post has been edited by stocks: Jan 7 2008, 04:27 PM

[OEXCHAOS]

Dad had his done recently. We was on it the same day.

TINY incision.

Mark

[OEXCHAOS]

If you want to beat up on Doc, then you had better give them some atta's for the advances they've made in recent years. Many cancers are not only no longer lethal but have been reduced to inconveniences. Debilitating arthritis is being circumvented with drugs and hip/knee replacements, and heart disease and stroke are killing fewer and fewer.

My parents are rather vibrant at an age where their parents were very old, frail and sedentary. Much of that is due to their good Doc(s).

[Rogerdodger]

In my next life I want to be a surgeon.

I did pretty good as a butcher and never lost any patients...or fingers.

[bigtrader]

Had a knee replacement about 14 months ago. If not for the scar you'd never know the difference if watching me walk.