Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Sept 16: Dr Sandeep Gupta, Senior Consultant Orthopedics, Fortis Hospital Mohali has successfully treated a 75-year-old lady who was bedridden for the past 2-3 years, with pus coming out of multiple places in her left thigh.
She had suffered a fracture of the left thigh bone a short while after her knee replacement was done elsewhere. She was operated for the same at other hospitals. Unfortunately, she developed an infection after her surgery for which she was operated multiple times in outside hospitals, without any success.
The lady had visited multiple big hospitals of the city private-public alike and was not given much hope of being able to walk again because of infected and un-united fracture with a broken plate inside. The family brought her to Dr Sandeep Gupta who offered to treat her with his own innovative technique of rail plate.
This technique involves three-stage surgery. The first stage involves – thorough cleaning and removal of dead and infected bone, which results in a gap that is filled with a temporary antibiotic cement spacer. The defect in this particular patient was 10 centimeters.
After around 6-8 weeks, the spacer is removed and the defect is filled by regenerating the patient’s own bone using rail plate technique. This technique reduces the time of treatment and is more patient-friendly (as compared to the older techniques) and hence more successful.
Typical defect of 10 cm, took 5 months to fill up in this patient. After the defect was filled, the fixator was removed and a small bit of the patient’s own bone graft was put. The patient was allowed full weight-bearing after that. Today the patient can perform almost all activities of her daily living without any assistance and is completely pain and infection-free. She only requires a stick off and on.
Dr Sandeep Gupta says ”this technique has the potential to revolutionize the treatment of infected non-union and give chance to such patients where the hope of saving the limb has almost gone.
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