Hip replacement advances make surgery a winning move for
Racquet Club owner
Mac Winker,
owner and president of the Racquet Club of Memphis, played
every sport at the high school he attended in Wisconsin. In
his favorite sport, baseball, his team went to the state finals
his junior year. He still holds eight out of 15 school records
in basketball. As a Green Beret in Vietnam, he completed 29
parachute jumps.
During his
career in the hospitality industry, Winker became an enthusiastic
tennis player, then a golfer. He also took up ice sculpturing,
a physically demanding hobby in which he routinely lifts 300
pounds of ice while working on a project.
“By my 60th
birthday, I was really hurting,” Winker says of his diagnosed
osteoarthritis in both hips.
“I’m on my
feet all day in my job, and I was experiencing pain on a regular
basis. When I would drive back to visit family or for hunting
trips, I’d have to stop every 200 miles and walk around. A
doctor diagnosed the problem, and I tried therapy, but the
pain continued. That’s when I started thinking about hip replacement.”
Rapid progress in a young field
Hip replacement
surgery, a procedure that was in its infancy when today’s Baby
Boomers were born, has benefited from breakthrough advances
in the design, materials, manufacturing, and implantation of
artificial joints in the past decade. At the same time, the
population of potential candidates for the surgery has greatly
increased.
“We are seeing
osteoarthritis in younger and younger people because of the
more active lives they are living,” says Dr. James Harkess,
a Campbell Clinic surgeon whose specialty is total joint replacement.
According to Harkess, the first of the Baby Boom generation
turns 60 this year, further increasing the number of people
reaching the age when joint replacement may be needed.
According to
the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, there was
an 88 percent increase in the number of hip replacement procedures
between 1991 and 2003. Health care research suggests that the
demand for joint replacement among people ages 65 to 74 will
increase more than 40 percent by 2015.
Less trauma, faster recovery
For Mac Winker,
the decision to have hip replacement surgery was based on his
desire to remain as active as possible for as long as possible.
But Winker
wanted to return to his activity as soon as possible.
The solution
was a newly developed minimally-invasive surgery technique,
one of the major advancements in joint replacement, according
to Dr. Harkess. “Because the incision is shorter, there is
less trauma to the muscles and tissues, so recovery is more
rapid,” Dr. Harkess says.
Dr. Harkess
and Winker agreed on a schedule of replacing one hip, allowing
time for recovery, then replacing the other hip, so Winker
would not be immobilized if there were problems. He had the
first surgery on his right hip in April 2003.
Winker’s second
hip replacement surgery was in September 2003. In both instances,
he committed to the recommended physical therapy. Just three
months after the second surgery, Winker and his family made
their annual holiday pilgrimage to St. Croix, where he played
12 rounds of golf in 14 days.
“The day after
my surgery, despite some discomfort, my life was better than
the day before,” Winker says.
“I can do just about anything”
Today, Winker
calls the result of his surgery “as perfect as can be.”
“It’s amazing
how far things have come just in the three years since I had
my surgery,” says Winker. “They are coming out with new products
and coming up with new techniques all the time. I just feel
so lucky that I had the surgery when I did, with the surgeon
that I had. I was in the hands of somebody who knew the latest
products, was trained in the latest techniques. I don’t think
I could have had a better experience anywhere in the world.
“I’m 64, and
I’m playing good golf. I’m back to ice sculpturing. I can do
just about anything I want—except play singles tennis. So,
I’m looking for something that’s physically challenging but
a little easier on the hips than singles tennis. The answer
is probably doubles tennis, a sport you can play throughout
your lifetime. I plan to start playing doubles soon.”
[Text courtesy of The Campbell Foundation]