Articles Posted in Stryker Hip

According to a recent news article from the Times-Herald, a patient interviewed was a former college football player at East Tennessee State University and a life long athlete who had developed severe arthritis in both of his hips. His doctors told him there was virtually no chance he would be able to continue walking if he did not have a double hip replacement.

The patient, now 56 years old, said he did not want a double hip replacement. There was no way he wanted to undergo the surgery and did everything he could to avoid the procedure. He said his daily pain level was eight out of ten and sometimes worse. He needed a walker and a cane just to get around.

Finally, after the pain got unbearable, he spoke to a new doctor who had recently relocated to the area and was using a relatively new procedure during surgery known as anterior total hip arthroplasty. Patient listened to what the doctor had to say and also did his own research. He determined the new procedure, which had been around for some time at other hospitals, was as good as advertised, and with this new approach, healing and rehabilitation took two months less on average than when using conventional surgical procedures for total hip replacement.
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Boston’s PBS affiliate, WGBH, recently featured a program showing what it is like to be in the operating room during a minimally invasive total hip replacement surgery. Traditional methods involved making a 12-inch incision along the side of a patient’s hip and dislocating the hip joint from the pelvis. This method, still used in patients over 60 and who have other health issues, requires patients to stay in the hospital for days or even weeks and undergo a slow and painful recovery process. The large incision also increases the risk patients will develop a serious infection following surgery.

With minimally invasive techniques, only a six-inch incision is needed at the top of a patient’s hip, and dislocation is not required in many cases. This means a patient can typically go home that same night and sleep in his or her own bed. This also means there will be less pain during recovery, less risk of an artificial hip failure, and less time away from work or one’s other daily routine.

The reason doctors are able to perform a minimally invasive total hip replacement surgery is though the use of modern technology. It all begins with surgeons and radiologists working together to take a CT scan of the patient’s pelvic area while he or she is in the operating room. Doctors then use a computer and the CT image to make a three dimensional virtual model of exactly how the operation will work. There is an electronic signaling device used to guide the surgeon while he or she is watching a monitor while the movements occur inside the patient.
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According to a recent news article from Medical News Today, men suffer more complications resulting from total hip and knee replacement surgery than woman who undergo the same procedure. Both surgeries are used in patients with painful joint arthritis and joint deterioration.

While, in some cases, a patient has suffered an acute trauma to the knee or hip where the joint is actually broken, most patients get the respective surgeries after living for years with chronic pain, and it gets to a point where they can no longer deal with the discomfort.

Researchers discovered how men fair worse after having surgery than women. First, the study noted, while men typically have total hip replacement or total knee replacement at an earlier age than women, they are more likely to not only have increased pain, but need second or subsequent surgeries to address the complications.

The study examined data from patients who had total joint replacement procedures at a single hospital between 2002 and 2009. This included almost 100,000 patients, which gives us an idea of the vast number of people having total hip and total knee replacements each year. The numbers of women having the procedures was slightly higher than men, but the numbers where close to being balanced. The numbers also reflected an average age of female patients being 70 and the average age of male patients being 65, which is standard.

When examining post-operative data, researchers found men were around 15 percent more likely to go to the emergency room for joint replacement complications than women within a month following surgery. Men were also more likely to have a heart attack following surgery than women, and men were 50 percent more likely to need a second surgery within two years to deal with the complications.
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Total hip replacement surgeries in the United States have increased by astonishing rates over the past decade. Medical device manufacturers have been heavily marketing new artificial hips to surgeons and patients as a way to get rid of the pain of arthritis and allow people to function as they did when they were years younger.

While many patients actually need a new hip, many may not. Additionally, regardless of the need for a total hip replacement, no patient needs to be victim to one of the numerous defective hips and surgical cutting guides that have hit the market. Victims have suffered extreme pain and suffering, partial or complete failures of their new artificial hips, and other serious health conditions related to a defectively designed medical device.

According to a recent news article from the Daily Mail, doctors in England are in clinical trials with a new technique they hope will one day lead to an end to total hip replacement surgery. This new technique uses an experimental product called Preob, which is called an osteoblastic (bone-forming) agent.
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