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At the age of 66, Patricia Bennett’s full-time job is taking care of her diabetic husband who is also a stroke victim. They’ve been married for 49 years and says she wouldn’t have it any other way. But, a botched hip replacement nearly left Patricia without the use of one of her legs. “I ended up going to five different surgeons and with each surgeon I was told that it was a very risky surgery and the outcome may be amputation,” says Patricia.
Fearful that she would be unable to take care of her husband, Patricia would not accept amputation as an option. “I was determined to find someone that was going to help me, I thought with all the things that go on, all the transplants and all the things they can do, there has got to be someone out there who can replace my leg or help me keep my leg,” says Patricia.
Patricia says Dr. Geoffrey Westrich at the Hospital For Special Surgery was just the angel she was looking for. Dr. Westrich performed a rare and complicated operation called a total femur replacement to save her leg. Only about 80 of these procedures are performed each year nationwide, many for bone cancer patients. “Our femur bone is our thigh bone and the upper part of our femur bone is the hip joint, the lower part of the femur bone is the knee joint and so a total femur replacement basically replaces the entire femur bone with a hip joint at the top and a knee joint at the bottom,” says Dr. Westrich.
The implant itself is made of cobalt chromium with high density plastic in the artificial hip and knee joints to allow for range of motion. “It is almost like an erector set that we put together, first we do it with trials to determine the right sizes for the patient then once we have the right trials then we basically open up the real implant and it is all put together in the operating room and then implanted in the patient,” says Dr. Westrich.
Before Patricia’s implant was put in, Dr. Westrich had to first eradicate an infection she had in her leg from prior surgery. He put in a temporary custom-made cement spacer that released antibiotics to fight infection and a temporary prosthesis. The second operation, three months later, was the total femur replacement.
Dr. Westrich says that while femur replacement is a complicated procedure, it’s ideal for patients who have had significant trauma and are in danger of losing their leg. “If we end up in situations where the bones can’t be fixed or someone had a fracture between a hip and knee replacement and they really couldn’t fix it than this would be a good solution to the problem,” says Dr. Westrich.
Now, eight months after the operation and intense rehab, Patricia is able to do her chores and has resumed her responsibility as primary caregiver for her husband. “I went to about September 2005 on crutches and then he let me go to the cane and gradually the leg has been getting stronger and I’m doing well with it and I’m very pleased here, I could have gone without a leg and I have my leg.”
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