A new study by Novant Overall health medical doctors sheds light on hip replacement
Posted at 12:ten AM on Sunday, March 26, 2023
Dr. Paul Lichtstein, of Novant Overall health, is in charge of a new, extensive study of how hip replacements are treated. Submitted/Salisbury Post
SALISBURY — Dr. Paul Lichtstein knows what it is like to be treated in a hospital, and he carries that with him as he aids his sufferers to this day. Lichstein is an orthopedic surgeon at Novant Overall health Orthopedics & Sports Medicine – Salisbury who specializes in adult reconstruction. Although performing a rotation at a health-related college in Virginia, Lichstein collided with an 18-wheeler late at evening. He dislocated his hip and broke his pelvis exactly where he was taken to Winston Salem for surgery.
“It was the singularity of my life for about a year and a half, recovering from this surgery and the influence it had on me, my profession, my loved ones, my loved ones, every little thing,” Lichstein mentioned.
His road to recovery was lengthy but profitable. With his health-related background, he understood firsthand the value of the type of operate he wanted to do with folks. That “deep-seated, private motivation” is what continues to drive him as a doctor.
“I got to a point exactly where I saw the light at the finish of the tunnel, I realized there was a tremendous quantity of duty that came with that, and I wanted to accept that duty,” Lichstein mentioned.
Lichtstein comes from a loved ones of medical doctors. He grew up in Greenville exactly where each his parents practiced medicine as did his grandfather. “Medicine was in the background, specially surgery, all through my childhood. A comforting, familiar backdrop to numerous of my experiences.”
On the other hand, he felt no stress from his loved ones to go into medicine, he just created a organic interest in it. Lichtstein got involved in science, life science and anatomy whilst nonetheless in higher college, exactly where he participated in a number of college applications.
Lichtstein knew he wanted to be a medical professional, but he also had a want to do other points ahead of going into medicine since of how a lot time and commitment it would take. Employing his undergraduate English degree, Lichstein taught Shakespeare at Oxford University ahead of returning to America to be a fly fishing instructor.
“I saw the globe and understood it as a lot as I could,” Lichstein mentioned. “I was capable to encounter some points that I wanted to, and then seriously draw from who I am and apply that to medicine.
Lichstein graduated from Wake Forest Healthcare College in 2011 and would train at Stanford and Harvard ahead of settling in Salisbury. In 2018, he very first started to create the root of a new study that has now been published.
The study is about the trend in hip replacement procedures themselves. Dr. Lichstein states that there are a single million total hip and knee replacements per year and that quantity will continue to develop. Individuals are increasingly active, younger, reside longer, the population is growing, and the all round top quality of procedures is acquiring superior. Due to the boost in remedy, the quantity of complications immediately after surgery has also elevated, even though the price at which they happen is nonetheless comparatively low.
A single of the major difficulties that happens immediately after hip replacement is periprosthetic fractures, which happen about the implant itself. Fractures generally happen in particular patterns, with particular remedy that fits the pattern recognized by medical doctors. Distinct orthopedic surgeons might see the similar pattern but have unique methods of treating the similar patient based on the sort of education they have.
“The query is: Is there a distinction in how these points are treated and does that have an effect on the outcome?” Lichstein mentioned.
The study has currently been published on PubMed, the government’s database of peer-reviewed research. It will be published on the net in the subsequent couple of weeks and published in print in the coming months.
“It is a multi-institutional study.” It is the biggest study of this nature ever undertaken. “It represents a quite fantastic slice of what is going on and how points are coming out and provides us the greatest image of what we’re performing and the results and the appropriateness of it that we’ve had so far,” Lichstein mentioned.
Institutions such as NIU, Harvard, Stanford, Emory, Arkansas, Vanderbilt, Novant and the University of San Antonio participated in the study. Lichstein created the study, recruited other members, and was senior author on it.
“I wanted to get a 20,000-foot view of what the patterns had been across the nation. What takes place? Who fixes these points? Does it make a distinction if a trauma specialist or an arthroplasty specialist fixes it? “That is exactly where we are now since no one knows,” Lichstein mentioned. “This nonetheless remains a difficulty. There are fantastic choices for treating this difficulty and a lot results depends on the surgeon’s familiarity with the difficulty. Which is a generalization that is generally correct, but I believe it is absolutely correct right here.”
The benefits of such a study are to give the health-related field a fantastic understanding of exactly where points at present stand alternatively of acquiring clear benefits.
“When we do these research, we finish up acquiring out extra about what we do not know than what we do know,” Lichstein mentioned.
Lichtstein hopes this will lead to a bigger potential study with extra organizations involved so they can come across extra precise options to superior treat folks. Recognizing what to do and what to say to a patient is the very first step in the lengthy procedure of delivering superior care for every person.
“So that we can then say to our sufferers with some degree of self-assurance, ‘Hey, here’s what we need to have to do.’ “Discovering the answer to the difficulty is what the target is,” Lichstein mentioned.