Flying High with New Shoulders As a professional pilot, George Hine depends on his arms for his livelihood. “There’s a lot of switches in the airplane that I flew that were up here on the ceiling, and I couldn’t reach them,” says Hine. Severe arthritis in both shoulders made it hard to do his job and made life unbearable. “I don’t even know if I could describe it. It’s just like, to me, somebody just sticking an ice pick in there and just moving it around,” says Hine. “I can’t even count the number of times that I have patients come into my office who have had profound arthritis of their shoulder and have chosen to live with it - be even in excruciating pain - because they heard that the procedure was so painful,” says Dr. John Mehalik, who is an orthopedic surgeon on medical staff of Lee Memorial Health System. George being one of them - he waited for years and exhausted his options. When he finally opted for surgery, he found it was far from what he imagined. “We’ve been able to develop techniques that allow us to minimize muscular disruption, minimize bleeding, minimize anesthesia time and also minimize pain,” says Dr. Mehalik. Less common than knee and hip replacement, approximately 53,000 Americans undergo shoulder replacement each year. Replacing damaged bone with metal and plastic parts is still a major undertaking, but with better tools, better visibility and better implants, surgery is fast, safe and reliable. “We’ve been able to compartmentalize shoulder replacement in such a way that the vast majority of patients now go home on the same day,” says Dr. Mehalik. “We did the surgery at approximately 7 o’clock in the morning and I walked out of that hospital at 4 o’clock that afternoon. Went home. And it was great,” says Hine. George had both shoulders replaced, three months apart. “I just could not believe the difference. It was just like night and day. Frankly Dr. Mehalik gave me my life back,” says Hine. Back in the air again - life is looking up. View More Health Matters video segments at ift.tt/1hcl5Cg Lee Memorial Health System in Fort Myers, FL is the largest network of medical care facilities in Southwest Florida and is highly respected for its expertise, innovation and quality of care. For nearly a century, we’ve been providing our community with everything from primary care treatment to highly specialized care services and robotic assisted surgeries. Visit leememorial.org _______ FOLLOW LIPSapp Classic Radio _______ FB: r-js/1vz7Pcz / TW: r-js/1kHd2Qt / Listen to LIPSapp Classic Radio r-js/1dOIQ18 #classicrock #rollingstones #ledzeppelin #santana #eagles #zztop #thewho #beatles #elvis #jimihendrix #dylan #acdc #michaeljackson #pinkfloyd #madonna #u2
Posted on: Mon, 17 Nov 2014 02:28:28 +0000