Introduction to Joint Replacement

Over the years, surgery has become more common. This may have been because of the advances in technology which have made such procedures accessible to the public in general. Combine this with the increase in conditions like arthritis which are known to be a great factor in degeneration of joints and therefore lead to hip, knee or wrist replacement et al.

Moreover, people nowadays have come to expect a certain type of life and they want to be able to keep up their lifestyle inspite of the demands it may make upon their body. This may include things like playing sports or the more mundane like being overweight et al.

Surgery itself is not an easy procedure to undertake and should only be considered as a last option. So first, the patient undergoes a variety of other alternative and basic treatments and medications. However if these fail to help the patient or if the pain becomes intolerable or if the patient has difficulty in functioning on a daily basis or a combination of the above then in that case surgery should be considered.

There are a number of alternative treatment options available to us like rest, weight loss, medication, physical therapy, and injection treatments. All of these, have their own pros and cons, have helped many and prove to be the first step to combat the pain and stiffness of arthritis.

Joint replacement, very simplistically, replaces the damaged joint surfaces with a part or more of an artificial joint after putting the blood vessels and nerves in place. The joint is thus made of various combinations of metal and plastic.

So to put it bluntly, the prosthetic joint is not a normal joint. The process may have to be repeated every five to seven years if the artificial joint wears out. Therefore, the quality of the artificial joint material and how much strain you put on it will determine how soon the joint will be replaced. Moreover, the procedure itself is complicated and demanding for everyone involved including the surgeons.

The post surgery recovery process is quite gradual and takes place in stages. Most patients see an improvement in mobility about a month after the procedure.

So it is highly recommended that you do not rush in to the operation without making sure you have tried all other non-surgical treatments. Furthermore, some research into what type of procedure is recommended and why and how will this specific procedure help the problem, is generally a good idea for the patient and family.

Do Your Antibiotics Really Work?

I want to start off by sharing a story with you about the truth of antibiotics. This story involves many trips to the emergency room, many not so great doctors and even more useless antibiotics.

Fortunately for us there are a couple good doctors in this story.

Lets go back a few years to 2003. This was the year I got my first MRSA infection. If you've ever had that type of infection then you know how painful it can be. This being my first experience with it you can imagine how scared I was. So naturally I went to the Emergency room. The doctor there told me this was a typical infection. He then cut it open and sent me home with antibiotics.

This type of thing went on and on.

I went back to the emergency room several times within the next year or two. Each time I went for the same thing. Each time they did the same thing. Cut the infection open bandage it and give me antibiotics. I eventually grew tired of this game and demanded answers. I assumed they didn't want to know the what was going on or they didn't know. Getting a straight answer was like pulling teeth.

Until, I ran across an emergency room doctor that cared. This doctor explained the whole thing to me. The reason why I had to keep coming back to the E.R. The reason none of the antibiotics were working. He even told me why the other doctors couldn't tell me anything.

My suspicions were right.

They themselves didn't know the answer to my questions.

What this doctor told me was informative and scary. He told me that a lot of infections like the one I had. MRSA. Were hard to diagnose. Infections like MRSA have many different strands. Which means that an antibiotic that works on one strand of MRSA might not work on another strand. This was the reason for so many different types of antibiotics and so many trips to the emergency room.

Finding the antibiotic to match that certain strand of infection was a crap shoot. They literally had no way to match the medicine to the illness.