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Five Hospitals Share Three Secrets to Improve Knee Surgery Outcomes
Multidisciplinary teams for complex patients.
Tomek says that a look at the data revealed 85%-90% of the knee replacement candidates were obese or morbidly obese, and many of them had been diagnosed with associated co-morbidities like diabetes, precarious kidney function, or peripheral vascular disease.
"What we discovered was that one healthcare system that did well had a multidisciplinary team—not just orthopedists, but anesthesiologists and internists that triaged patients preoperatively to identify the ones they think would run into trouble," he says. These patients were then singled out for special scrutiny.
"It may turn out that someone would really be better off having surgery three months from now, once they get their blood sugars under control. And if so, you would cancel the surgery until that time,"Tomek says. "It was a valuable lesson that if you take the time at the front end, involving internists and affiliated medical staff to enter the discussion about whether the surgery is safe to do, it pays dividends."
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Comments are moderated. Please be patient.
SherriCaron (5/29/2012 at 4:57 PM)
I have to agree with most if not everthing in the artical. Having just had both of my Kees' done at the beginning of the year. I have had alot of surgery and found that this has been the easiest of everything. I am a Materials Manager for a ASC and I came back to work in less than 9 weeks. I owe that to the great care I recieved before, during and after surgery. My Surgeon has a great protocol that allowed me to be fully informed and make the transition from Hospital to home to work with ease. I know that I am a rare patient in that I have also been a surgical tech for over 20 years and knew what was involved, but my experience has totally impressed me and those around me. I think if more facilities/surgeons give that kind of care to the "overall" details we would see and increase in patient satifaction surveys and much happy patients in the follow up.