“Indians are very intelligent people. I often ask my friend Dr. (Chittaranjan) Ranawat I often ask Ranawat who he thinks are the smartest people in the world — the Chinese or the Indians. Well, my colleague Dr. Javad Parvezi however thinks the Iranians are the smartest because he is from there.” With a hearty chuckle, Dr. Richard H. Rothman with a hearty laugh, 72-year-old Dr.Rothman settles down for a chat at New Delhi’s Hyatt Regency hotel..
The ace American surgeon, who designed one of the most advanced hip replacement systems so far, and holds many patents on state-of-the-art apparatuses, His on a visit to New Delhi to train e is in New Delhi to trainyoung orthopaedic surgeons on basic anthroplasty, or the surgical replacement of a joint. Richmond designed the hip implant a good eight years ago, but even today, he needs you to merely tweak the subject to start off animatedly about As excited about the procedure as he was eight years ago, he starts off talking about how the implant is way better than the first ever hip replacement invented by his mentor Sir John Charnley, the iconic British orthopaedic. “It is immensely popular in the West, it can bring a whole lot of difference to the quality of life,” he begins.
His device is called Accolade. “I don’t quite like the name, but well, it works real good. Its manufacturer Stryker holds the patent,” says the effervescent 72-year-old, theac founder of the Rothman Institute in Philadelphia, known for pioneering research since the 1970s.
Accoladesettled in Philadelphia where he runs the well-known Rothman Institute since 1970. The procedure has brought in a huge difference to the quality of hip replacement surgery,ery because it doesn’t cement the implant to the bone, unlike the earlier procedure.
“Earlier, our biggest challenge was how to make the artificial system stay with the bone. Often they would either break or loosen. We used to give a guarantee of 105-1520 years only and there was an 80 per cent success rate. Now with Accolade, we can safely say the replaced hip can outlast you,” states Rothman with discernible relish.
The James Edwards professor in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the prestigious Jefferson Medical College, however, putscounts a one per cent failure rate on account of human error.
“The procedure is simple and easy, but human performance is not perfect, so there is one per cent failure rate of Accolade. One patient in 2000 may die due to a heart failure or so,” says the surgeon who handles at least 10 cases of hip replacement a day at his InsituteInstitute.
Highlighting the popularity of the system, he states, “OurMy I institute has about 80 surgeons and conductss more than 17,000 operations a year, including 6,500 hip replacement surgeries a year. The implantIt is made of hard ceramic, doesn’t wear out. After the implant, patients can jog and even go skiing though we suggest to them not to jump from a big height.” However, he counts good pain management as the the biggest achievement of the advanced hip replacment surgery is pain management.. “On a scale of 0-10 per cent, I would say a patient goes through 0-1 per cent pain and can be discharged from the hospital in two to three days.” Proud of his institute, he highlights the point that it gets more grants than any other institute. “This underlines the quality of our research work. Also, we publish more data than any other institute in the world.”
Talking about training Indian surgeons here, Dr. Rothman, on his sixth visit to India, says, “In three days, I would be training over 100 young surgeons.” The training, held at the India Habitat Centre this past week in collaboration with orthopaedic surgeon Dr. O.N. Nagi from Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, was made available to young doctors at a nominal rate.
With Accolade finding the approval of the Indian Government for some years ago now, Rothman says, “Its use in the country has doubled last year.”
But he adds, “In the U.S., over three hundred thousand joint replacement surgeries have been done so far. But in a country of one billion like India, only 30,000 knee replacements have taken place. So it has a lot to catch up.”
Rothman, with many textbooks and over 200 original research papers under his name, sums up the conversation with a useful tip. “I suggest to everyone to never give up on daily exercise and maintain their ideal weight. At this age, I walk 4-5 kms a day and work fulltime.” By the way, he took part in a marathon at the age of 65.
