A Rare Bilateral Anterior Hip Surgery
A rare bilateral anterior approach total hip arthroplasty (THA) performed at AMITA Health Orthopedics Institute Hoffman Estates helped Karen pictured at right, a 68-year-old ovarian cancer survivor from Chicago regain the moblity she had lost six months prior.
During the course of her cancer treatment, Karen had presented with hip fractures on both sides of her body - an unusual and challenging diagnosis requiring a carefully considered approach to reconstruction. She was referred to Hasham Alvi, M.D.,orthopedic surgeon at AMITA Health Orthopedics Institute who specializes in joint reconstruction. "Dr Alvi offered me salvation," Karen said. "He spoke to me about the challenges of having to repair the broken hips separately and advised me that my best alternative was to have both hips done at the same time."
"Ther are a number of benefits to using an anterior approach to hip replacement," said Dr Alvi. "I believe there is a shorter length of hospital stay, decreased use of narcotic pain medication and there are no dislocation precautions (such as those required in posterior approach). An anterior approach is a muscle sparing approach, however not every patient is a good candidate for this type of surgery. The concerns I had relative to the difficulty in rehabilitating one hip while the other was still fractured meant that a bilateral approach was the best option for her."
Karen's hip surgery delivered an exceptional outcome. She was up and walking with minimal use of a cane in two and a half weeks-quite an accomplishment given the fact that she hadn't walked in six months.
The AMITA Health Orthopedics Institute team played important roles in this success story. "We have a program called rapid recovery of joint replacement that gets people up and moving as quickly as possible after surgery, normally within five hours, provided it is safe for the patient." said Christopher Babashka, clinical manager for medical/surgical rehabilitation. In Karen's case, we waited a day for her blood pressure and hemoglobin levels to normalize. Once she began moving, she did great. We also had Karen participate in what we call joint camp. The camp is a twice daily program, during which all of our knee and hip replacement patients make their own way to the physical therapy gym to work together and encourage one other in their therapy exercises and conditioning!
