Creaking at 6 months post TKR.

[robert johnson]

There are occasions where, for a number of reasons they can't do the spinal and have to revert to doing a general anyway...Not an uncommon occurrence either.

Jo, I want you to know that I really do appreciate your answers. They're really great! This is good to know. And like I said, that was his attitude about it, like it was no big deal.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by this. Are you implying there was some medical negligence on their part? How come the 'left themselves open' to making a mistake? ... I'm sure he did the best be could.

No, I'm not going that far in saying it was "negligence". I thought I made that clear earlier, but maybe I didn't. No, if I say, "something went wrong" that doesn't really necessarily mean there was negligence, although it is possible that there was. An example where something goes wrong in the real world, without it being negligence might be a person getting a flat tire on the way to an important meeting. "Something went wrong", preventing you from making the meeting on time, but it wasn't necessarily a matter of negligence, although in rare cases it could have been (like you knew you had a bad tire). The boss would be hard pressed in holding that against you, assuming he believed you. I'm sure there are countless examples of that in our lives.

The fact that this isn't an "exact science", which by the way were my doctor's exact words on one occasion where I was having problems (again, after the fact), means that things can go wrong. Picture yourself painting a landscape of London. Things can go wrong.

I have an image in my mind of all the things that could possibly have gone wrong, starting with what I've said so far, all the way to bowlegged leg and beyond. The operative notes talk about how he went "off" the computer tracker because one of the cuts it was dictating did not seem right to him, so he reverted to the mechanical method. This seems reasonable to me, but it also opens questions in my mind. If you are interested, I'll scan the operative notes and send them to you in a private message. I would be interested in your honest appraisal.

Well they should have! In the UK (and elsewhere I am sure) there is a list of possible complications which the doctors are required, by law, to inform the patient of. These include:

Oh yes, of course. But you didn't expect me to believe that did you? :evil::hehe:

One day my wife and I were in an oral surgeon's office. I was having an extraction. Before the extraction they asked us if we might be interested in an implant later. We said yes, so they told us we had to view a little movie on the subject, which had all the risk factors in it. Well, I can tell you, we were both shocked -- shocked, I say -- at how scary it seemed. We both agreed you'd have to be nuts to agree to that. Well, two minutes later the doctor came in, and we told him that was pretty insane. Who would agree to that. His answer was, "oh, it's a piece of cake."

Hunh?!:pzld:

You see, that's the problem with all of that stuff. The lawyers make them go so far with the warnings, that we as patients don't know which is real and which is overkill. Think about it for a second. If I believed half of that stuff was actually possible, do you really believe I would have subjected myself to the operation?

robert

 

[robert johnson]

- paralysis from spinal
- stroke or heart attack
- death!

Remember the old Woody Allen line: "Nobody messes with my spleen."

Well, I think it's a safe bet that nobody is gonna have a knee replacement, if they actually believed there was any kind of real chance of these three above happening. Imagine the wife's reaction upon hearing her dear husband just died during a knee replacement. You're not going to tell me she would say, "Oh OK, as long as you informed him ahead of time. No problem! :thmb:"

- continuing pain
- noises like squeaks or clunks
- loosening of implants
- having an unstable joint
- not being able to get good range of movement

Even with these lessor risks, one starts to get to the point of "why bother?".

It's the fact that you're ALSO told that all of the risk factors combined add up to 1% or something like that, that makes people agree.

In other words, while yes they are risk factors, nobody seriously believes they will happen. So if one does happen, the natural reaction would be that something went wrong.

 

[Josephine]

Oh so true! We always hear the good bits and assume the bad bits won't happen to us. That's human nature. By the same token, people read all the negative stuff on websites and actually believe that!

I think in the long haul, the fact that hip and knee replacements are currently the most performed surgeries on a global basis, speaks volumes for their success because, as I've been at pains to point out numerous times before, if these joints did only last 10-15 years, by now we'd be so swamped with revisions, we'd have no theatre time left to do primaries any more!

By the same token, to use the motor vehicle as an example, if there were so many recalls for design faults, the vehicle would end up never coming off production.

We could go on, this is a great topic for discussion and, as you can see, I have not only masses of experience but lots of time put in with discussions with surgeons over the years. It gives me 'opinions', perhaps more so than the average nurse! :hehe: Plus I have been in on this specialism since the start and seen it grow from basic design. It might interest you to know I scrubbed for the very first knee replacement that was ever done back in 1963! That's history!

I'd be interested to see your surgical notes. Perhaps you can scan them and send them to me in an email: [email protected].