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/a...rica/letter.php
Edited by stocks, 07 January 2008 - 04:27 PM.
