DOCTORS JOIN EARLY RELEASE PARADE (Orthopedics This Week)
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The march toward single-day joint replacement surgery goes on. The biggest impediment to patients returning to their homes following hip or knee replacement surgery, according to many surgeons, is pain and its management.
According to Suzanne Laurent, writing for news @seacoast, Thomas King, M.D. of the Knee, Hip and Shoulder Center in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, says that “There are three reasons for keeping patients in the hospital following surgery. [They are] the risk of wound infection, bleeding control and pain management.”
King has developed a surgical method that allows many of his patients to leave the same day they had a surgical joint replacement. Laurent says that he uses a combination of regional anesthesia, medications for pain control, a surgical antiseptic, and another agent that reduces bleeding.
“In the past five months” Laurent quoted King as saying, “97 out of about 200 patients wer...
