Wandering around the Bristol Regional Medical Center last week, I had time to notice things. A sign in the window of the “Short Stay Surgery” department caught my attention. It read “Hip and Knee Replacements Check in Here.” When did body part replacements become “short stay” surgical procedures? Fairly recently, it seems.
What Are Recent Advances in Knee Joint Replacement Surgery?
Minimally invasive surgery (MIS) has revolutionized knee replacement surgery as well as many fields of medicine. Its key characteristic is that it uses specialized techniques and instrumentation to enable the surgeon to perform major surgery without a large incision.
The “specialized techniques and instrumentation” involves taking an MRI and sending it off to the computer folks, who custom design a cutting plan for the patient’s knee. This allows the surgeon to make a much smaller incision, with the corresponding reduction in trauma. The result is quicker recovery for the patient. People are now further along in the recovery process at four weeks then they would have been in six months using the traditional method.
What was once science fiction is now a routine procedure, upgrade available.
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