Painful hip replacement surgery with long recovery periods could soon be found only in medical history books.
Using a new procedure deve- loped in the United States, doctors can now have patients out of hospital within three days, rather than a week, and back on their feet in less than a month, without the need for lengthy rehabilitation.
Today, the Singapore General Hospital (SGH) signs an agreement with Zimmer Inc, an international manufacturer of reconstructive orthopaedic implants and trauma products, to open the SGH-Zimmer Institute, where surgeons from Singapore and other countries in the region will be trained to perform the procedure.
Located within the SGH campus, the institute will be part of a network of satellite training centres affiliated to The Zimmer Institute in the US. The deal is the first such collaborative partnership in Asia.
Dr Lo Ngai Nung, a senior consultant orthopaedic surgeon at SGH, said Singapore was the first country in Asia to adopt the Minimally Invasive Solutions (MIS) mini-incision procedure.
In traditional hip replacement surgery, surgeons have to make a cut about 20cm to 25cm long to expose the hip joint. They then remove the arthritic hip joint and replace it with a metal, plastic or ceramic implant.
The patient has to stay in the hospital for about a week and often requires months of rehabilitation.
MIS allows the surgeon to perform replacement surgery through two small incisions measuring between 5cm and 8cm, and remove the existing hip by splitting the muscles, rather than cutting them, which speeds up the healing process.
With the new method, the patient can often be discharged within three days and rehabilitation can be cut down to a month or less.
Dr Lo said: 'The aim here is to reduce hospital stays, hasten rehabilitation and reduce cost for patients. Scarring is also reduced.
'It's all hands-on at the institute. The surgeons will participate in wet-lab training, where they can interact with instructors and experience MIS procedures by working on cadavers,' he said.
Doctors at SGH perform an average of 150 hip replacement operations yearly. Of these, 60 per cent were carried out using the MIS method last year.
They hope to increase this number to about 70 per cent by the end of next year.
To date, about 70 surgeons from China, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and India have already been trained in the new procedure.
Hip replacement is a surgical procedure in which the diseased parts of the hip joint are removed and replaced with new, artificial parts.
The wearing down of the hip joint from osteoarthritis is the most common reason people need replacement surgery. Other contributing conditions include rheumatoid arthritis, avascular necrosis (loss of bone caused by insufficient blood supply), injury and bone tumours.
3-day hospital stay, faster recovery
SALES promoter Sin Yoke Kuen, 46, used to hate looking at her own reflection when she was walking.
'I would keep my head down, my eyes fixed on the ground, just in case I happened to catch a glimpse of myself in a store window or the stares from passers-by,' she said.
Miss Sin had an uneven, tilted gait, the result of a high fever when she was three that left her with poor muscle development in her limbs and one leg longer than the other.
Today, however, Miss Sin is able to walk with her head held high, after she had her hip replaced by doctors using the latest minimally invasive hip replacement surgery.
Dr Lo Ngai Nung, a senior consultant orthopaedic surgeon at the Singapore General Hospital, said: 'Miss Sin's uneven gait and stiff joint caused her to put lots of pressure on her hip when she walked, wearing it down at a rather fast rate. She was suffering excruciating pain when she saw us.'
Miss Sin said the pain was a result of a fall at home, which she did not think was serious. 'It became so bad that I had trouble getting on and off the bus and it took me more than half an hour to walk from the bus stop to my home, 100m away,' she recalled.
However, she had to wait a year to have the operation because of a lung infection. So when she finally underwent the procedure on Dec 27 last year, she said the date was etched 'forever in my mind'.
She was warded for only three days at the hospital. Within a week, she was walking without crutches and with renewed self-confidence.