NEW HIP JOINTS

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31312, 7 March 1967, Page 16

NEW HIP JOINTS

A 68-year-old Christchurch man, Mr F. W. Hill, yesterday walked out of Christchurch Hospital with two new hip joints. He said: “They’re good; I hardly know Tv<e got them.”

He is recovering well from a new type of operation completely replacing the hip joints. Several have been performed at the hospital in the last six months, the first before the recent success reported from Auckland Hospital.

“It was pretty painful to get about and sleep was difficult at night,” Mr Hill said yesterday. After the first operation in November, replacing the hip joint of his right leg, there was “a wonderful difference.”

After spending Christmas at home, he was readmitted to hospital for an operation on his left leg. He began moving around after a fortnight, and yesterday had no trouble in walking out of the hospital doors with the aid of elbow crutches.

Surgeons at the orthopaedic department removed the upper part of the femur, or thigh bone, and replaced it with a metal head. They also placed a new metal socket on the side of the pelvis for the metal head to fit into, thus forming a new ball and socket joint This prosthesis was done for each hip. Eaeh operation took about two hours. It has been done on a number of patients with osteo-arthritis, a degenerative condition of the hip joint Mr Hill is the first patient to have both joints replaced at the hospital. The patients had severe pain and restriction of movement. The aim is to relieve the pain, give reasonable hip movement and a stable hip.

An inert surgical metal is used that does not produce any tissue reaction. Mr Hill, who is a retired brewery worker, said he

would have to return to the hospital regularly for physiotherapy, but the doctors had “done a good job” and there was now almost no pain.