Age as a Factor, Hip Celebrities and General News

by Pamela
(Hip Replacement and Recovery)

Is Age a Factor

A study published this week on OrthoSuperSite looked at the variables associated with perioperative morbidity following revision joint surgery. Although they found that the older the person was the more likely they were to die they stressed that this was not simply due to the person's age and concluded: -

Surgeons should recognize that co-morbid conditions and not age probably play the dominant role in patient survival. Advanced age should not be used as a sole determinant of perioperative survival.

This is an important finding as it is too easy in these days of cost cutting to deny older people surgery simply on the grounds of their age.

Celebrity Hip Patients
Good to hear that Zsa Zsa Gabor seems finally to have turned the corner and had her feeding tube removed this week. Zsa Zsa, who had her hip replaced following a fall in her home in July, suffered a series of potentially fatal blood clots over the summer. Her health became so fragile that a priest was called to give the last rites but this is one fighting lady who just refused to give in.

Wayne Sleep, one of my hip replacement hero, is now off on tour. Wayne had his hip replaced in January 2010 and by April was dancing with the Royal ballet. The role, one of the ugly sisters, demanded he made 50 consecutives leaps (jettes?) around the stage - demanding enough - but he had to do them in high heels. During his tour he's promised to do "a montage of my best spins from famous dances." Considering he was heading for a wheelchair bound existence that's not bad going!

Hip Replacement and Recovery

I'm not even going to mention the new look of the site - nope not a word.

Good news is that the site is going from strength to strength with almost 200 unique visitors on one day last week and an overall total of 1258 different people visiting the site during that September. I'm so pleased that the site is of use to so many people but I'm not resting yet and am totally open to suggestions for new pages or improvements.

One thing I've realised is that many people can't quite get their heads around RSS feeds so I'm going to be offering a link to this weekly blog as an ezine. Right after I post this I'm going to work out how to do it so hopefully by next week it'll be up and running.

And next week I'll be in India giving away the cash we raised during the abseil. The total so far is £1500 with at least a few hundred more £ to come.

Until next week
Best wishes
Pamela