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>> What we found is that for knee replacements to last hopefully a lifetime they need
to be inserted in perfect alignment.
The trend now is to go with navigation.
Pretty much as you navigate in your automobile.
Navigation can be done during surgery interoperatively and there are devices
and computers to assist us in perfect placement of the components.
This has been shown to improve the alignment and, thereby,
should improve the longevity of the implant.
Now the newest trend is to actually do a lot of this work,
which we used to do during the surgery, ahead of time.
So we can actually base the alignments cutting blocks on a patient's MRI or CAT scan
by taking an MRI ahead of time of the knee,
the hip and the ankle we can get custom-made alignment blocks made for the patient
so that the surgery will go much faster and the cuts will be absolutely accurate and precise.
So this would be a model of a patient's bone
that was made specifically for them based on their MRI.
It includes every little bone spur, every defect in the cartilage
and from this is made this positioning guide and this will go
in only one position on that patient's knee.
This would be the lower bone the tibia and this would be the alignment block for that.
See how it fits on absolutely rigidly?
And two guide pins would go into here and on those guide pins would be the cutting blocks
so we know the exact alignment that we need to make for the cuts on the bone.
The time now in the hospital based on our newest techniques is only a two-day timeframe.
A lot of people say three days but now
with tissue-sparing techniques we spare the quadriceps muscle.
We don't violate that during the surgery.
People are able to get up and walk even the day of and the day after surgery
so the hospital stay is much shorter.
The recovery time depends on how active you were before the surgery.
Some people are using a walker before the surgery;
some people are just impaired a little bit while they're playing tennis.
If you are a community ambulator and you are able to get back into the community typically
within a month you're able to drive and go to the store, go to the mall that type of thing.
Within a month sports will depend on how active you wish to be.
Golfing within usually 2 to 3 months you'll be able to start hitting balls again.