Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore   

Conference on arthroplasty from May 15

COIMBATORE: Ganga Hospital will hold a three-day international conference on arthroplasty in the city from May 15. Over 250 leading orthopaedic and joint replacement surgeons from all over the country and also Sri Lanka, Nepal and Malaysia will participate, organising chairman and Director of the hospital S. Rajasekaran told presspersons on Monday.

More than 25 live surgeries would be performed by surgeons from the U.K, France, Germany, Australia and Malaysia. A special emphasis would be on the techniques for using fourth generation prosthesis and revision surgery. Patients undergoing these surgeries would be able to lead a normal life.

The spine surgeon said the World Health Organisation had declared the present decade as “The bone and joint decade”. To emphasise the increasing impact of musculo-skeletal disorders on human life, arthritis was described one of the main causes of human pain and suffering.

At a rough estimate, more than 15 million people in the country suffered from arthritis and required timely and appropriate treatment without which even normal mobility might be impaired. Patients suffering from arthritis might lose all the power needed to walk. Movements in the upper limbs would also be affected. Eventually, these people would become dependent on others for normal activities. There was an urgent need for increasing awareness among the public on arthritis. The medical community should be updated on the advances in arthritis treatment.

Explaining arthritis, Dr. Rajasekaran said normally every joint had a good painless range of movements because of the presence of a very smooth cartilage covering and the synovial fluid which provided lubrication in the joint.

Owing to various disorders there could be damage to the cartilage covering the joint or to the fluid within the joint. This led to arthritis. Some types of arthritis, such as rheumatoid arthritis, could affect any joint in the body at any age. Relief from pain could be got through medication in the early stages. But, surgery was needed when arthritis worsened.

On awareness on the causes and preventive measures, he said most of the patients ignored the initial symptoms and consulted a doctor only when the pain was crippling or when they were unable to perform their routine tasks. Some others continued with their daily tasks after taking pain killers.

Most of the surgical treatment was associated with joint replacement surgery. The major problem with joint replacement was the longevity of the joint and also restricted range of movements that did not allow the patients to do all their normal activities. But, many recent developments allowed the patients to do all normal activities like sports, sitting, squatting on the floor and even hard manual labour, Dr. Rajasekaran said.

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