The Hip Resurfacing Procedure
Dr. Travis Stork: -- you’ll realize with arthritis of any joint particularly the hip joint, it could be so devastating. We have Dr. Thomas Schmalzried here. He’s the director of the Joint Replacement Institute at St. Vincent’s Medical Center here in Los Angeles. He’s going to talk a little bit more about this surgery which is it’s such a great option for people like Beth, is it not?
Dr. Thomas Schmalzried: We got a growing number of young adults who want to maintain healthy active lifestyles but they’ve been slowed down because of arthritis from a congenital deformity or trauma. So hip resurfacing provides them an option where your lessen days of the skeleton, it preserves more bone, they’re showing an animation here where you can see that the femur is recapped. It’s like putting a rethread on your car tires. And it saves the skeleton so that if you need a hip replacement later in life, you got good bones stock for that second operation.
Dr. Travis Stork: We have shared some footage of the surgery itself that everyone can look at and this is the hip resurfacing procedure in action.
Dr. Thomas Schmalzried: What you’re actually seeing is that’s the femoral head after it’s been machined. Some drill holes are being made in order to increase the surface area for fixation using bone cement which you’ll see in just a minute. The white substance that you see there is an acrylic that starts of soft and then it hardens up to mold the two pieces together. You remove the excess and there you go the nice smooth, shiny surface.
Dr. Lisa Masterson: That’s pretty cool, isn’t it? That’s amazing. That’s fantastic.
Dr. Thomas Schmalzried: And Beth, she’s amazing. I mean, so much credit goes to her and there’s a whole generation of people like her that are unfortunately disabled prematurely but they’re motivated to get better. When she does her job, if the surgeon does his job, you’re going to have a great result just like Beth.
Dr. Lisa Masterson: Beth is on the right track.
Dr. Travis Stork: She is.
Dr. Lisa Masterson: Yeah because you want to exercise, keep your bones strong and prevent osteoporosis, keep getting that because you want to maintain what he has fixed. So you want to eat the calcium and the vitamin D and avoid smoking. And I know you’re going to do it because you’re living a healthy lifestyle with that triathlon.
Dr. Travis Stork: Thank you Dr. Schmalzried. Thanks for being here.
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