COIMBATORE: Doctors of a private hospital on Thursday performed an advanced hip surgery in just 20 minutes on an 87-year-old woman having both cardiac and renal complications.
The surgery was challenging as it had to be performed swiftly and greater the delay in completing the procedure the higher the chance of it turning fatal, said Dr A Sakthivel, orthopaedic surgeon at KG hospital.
The woman had suffered a fracture in her hip bone after a fall and doctors in other hospitals were reluctant to operate upon her. Operating upon elderly people needs care because of three reasons as it has to be ensured that the surgery is done in a short time, recovery is quicker and mobility faster. Otherwise, chances of them developing bed sores and pneumonia are very high, doctors said.
At the KG hospital, the surgery was performed through a pinhole procedure wherein surgeons set right the fractured hip through a 1 cm incision. “The woman’s heart was only 20 per cent functional and the kidneys were dysfunctional. The bones were weak. It forced us to change the head of the femur and replace it with a metal bone and socket,” the surgeon said.