CHENNAI: A rare and complicated orthopaedic surgery was performed recently on a 50-year-old patient at Dr Mehta’s Hospitals. The surgery was successfully carried out by a team of doctors led by orthopaedic surgeons Dr Ashok Sunil Gavaskar and Dr Parthasarathy Srinivasan.
“Elbow replacement is not as common as knee or hip replacement surgery in India. This is because there are not many experts in the field for elbow replacement and it also requires special skills and training to achieve the best results,” said Dr Parthasarathy.
A painful elbow is a rare condition. The patient, on whom the procedure was done, was suffering from pain for the last 18 months. He had inflammatory arthritis of his left elbow which restricted his daily routine for two years. One of his joints was affected and he could move it only till 30 degrees. “In such cases, we perform arthrodesis where we fuse the joints into one to relieve the pain but that does not give any mobility. We chose the Conrad-Murray total elbow replacement at the hospital. Now, the patient is able to move his hands freely,” he said.
But the issue with this surgery is that the implants are not so easy to combine because the surgery is not common. Also, unlike the lower limb bones, the elbow bones are very small which leads to technical difficulties in getting a good fixation. “The longevity of the joint is based on how well it fixes the bone and how well the process survives, and these two things are dependent on the surgical technique,” he shared.
Dr N Kannan, medical director, said “Ours is a multi-specialty hospital which has successfully conducted over 2,50,000 advanced surgeries and 100s of successful transplants.