AussieHipster
new member
- Joined
- Jan 9, 2020
- Messages
- 14
- Age
- 48
- Country
- Australia
- Gender
- Male
Hey folks
I’m a 43 year-old Australian male living in Melbourne, and was diagnosed with Stage 4 Avascular Necrosis a few months ago. My GP referred me to an Orthopaedic Surgeon, and I went with her first recommendation. At the start of December this surgeon completed bone decompression on both femurs, which he said had a 50% chance of repairing the damage; if not, I’d be looking at a total hip replacement in both hips.
Two weeks after the surgery and I was in extreme pain, which got worse over following weeks, leading to me hitting the ED for pain after high doses of opioids stopped working. I have just finished five days of Ketamine infusions as an inpatient to try to treat the pain, and during this stay had further X-rays and CT scans on my hips by a different Orthopaedic Surgeon. It turns out the first surgery went rather badly; it actually pierced the top of the right femur, where I have intense pain, and drilled into my pelvis. 3 times.
I'm a tad angry, as this *seems* to have caused irreparable damage. I'm now unable to walk due to the pain, and have had to postpone an important celebratory trip to Europe with my partner at great expense. However, I know that I can only move onwards to try to repair the damage, so am remaining optimistic about it all.
I rushed blindly into the first surgery without doing much research. In hindsight, not smart. As an ex-journalist, I tend to research the heck out of every important decision in my life, but foolishly placed this decision in the hands of "trusted" experts, and I’m not going to do that again! Unfortunately, I’ve found that surgeons don’t tend to like many questions being asked – how many operations they’ve done, their success rate, thoughts on life-span of the devices, etc. I've also found hugely conflicting information on total hip replacements; the second surgeon claimed less than 1% of his patients developed serious complications, while recent Australian reports quoted in the media show between 25 and 40%!
So then, the point of this post – how the heck can I educate myself better on finding a good Orthopaedic surgeon in Australia, and on viable alternatives to a total hip replacement? I’ve had a few word of mouth recommendations, but would really like to find some good data on success rates of various surgeons and procedures.
Any advice, no matter how basic, would be hugely appreciated. Fingers crossed you can help point me in vaguely the right direction, as any (good) information is better than no information.
I’m a 43 year-old Australian male living in Melbourne, and was diagnosed with Stage 4 Avascular Necrosis a few months ago. My GP referred me to an Orthopaedic Surgeon, and I went with her first recommendation. At the start of December this surgeon completed bone decompression on both femurs, which he said had a 50% chance of repairing the damage; if not, I’d be looking at a total hip replacement in both hips.
Two weeks after the surgery and I was in extreme pain, which got worse over following weeks, leading to me hitting the ED for pain after high doses of opioids stopped working. I have just finished five days of Ketamine infusions as an inpatient to try to treat the pain, and during this stay had further X-rays and CT scans on my hips by a different Orthopaedic Surgeon. It turns out the first surgery went rather badly; it actually pierced the top of the right femur, where I have intense pain, and drilled into my pelvis. 3 times.
I'm a tad angry, as this *seems* to have caused irreparable damage. I'm now unable to walk due to the pain, and have had to postpone an important celebratory trip to Europe with my partner at great expense. However, I know that I can only move onwards to try to repair the damage, so am remaining optimistic about it all.
I rushed blindly into the first surgery without doing much research. In hindsight, not smart. As an ex-journalist, I tend to research the heck out of every important decision in my life, but foolishly placed this decision in the hands of "trusted" experts, and I’m not going to do that again! Unfortunately, I’ve found that surgeons don’t tend to like many questions being asked – how many operations they’ve done, their success rate, thoughts on life-span of the devices, etc. I've also found hugely conflicting information on total hip replacements; the second surgeon claimed less than 1% of his patients developed serious complications, while recent Australian reports quoted in the media show between 25 and 40%!
So then, the point of this post – how the heck can I educate myself better on finding a good Orthopaedic surgeon in Australia, and on viable alternatives to a total hip replacement? I’ve had a few word of mouth recommendations, but would really like to find some good data on success rates of various surgeons and procedures.
Any advice, no matter how basic, would be hugely appreciated. Fingers crossed you can help point me in vaguely the right direction, as any (good) information is better than no information.