Doctors

Link  http://www.newsweek.com/id/46170

July 2006

At 42, Sally Seeley was barely able to walk. Diagnosed with osteoarthritis in her late 20s, she tried a range of treatments from water aerobics to Vioxx. But her condition only got worse. Finally, an orthopedic surgeon recommended total hip replacement. She worried that she was too young for such surgery, but she just couldn't stand the discomfort any longer. "The pain was gone immediately," says Seeley, now 49. Three months ago, she had her right hip done; she's already back at work.

Joint replacement was once considered a last resort for elderly patients who were immobilized. Now, thanks to improved artificial joints made from longer-lasting materials like titanium, patients in their 50s and younger are signing up in growing numbers. More than 600,000 hip and knee replacements were performed in the United States last year. While the average patient was well over 60 years old, the number of people younger than 65 getting the surgery has grown by 20 percent over the past five years. "Maybe 10 or 15 years ago, the threshold was the ability to walk or do errands," says Dr. Edwin Su, an orthopedic surgeon at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York. "Now it's continuing to ski, golf or windsurf."

Doctors compare joint replacement to replacing tires on a car that's out of alignment. Over the decades, your weight can wear down your bones. This is especially true for patients with arthritis, where inflammation destroys the cartilage surrounding the joint, causing the bones to grind together painfully. In knee replacements, the most common joint-replacement procedure, doctors cut into the joint and remove the damaged portions of the tibia (the lower leg bone), patella (kneecap) and femur (thigh bone). They are replaced with metal and plastic components. The surgery lasts at least two hours and requires general anesthesia. Artificial knees generally last from 10 to 15 years. Hips are the second most commonly replaced joints, followed by shoulders...