Pioneer

Hiranandani Hospital Launches Comprehensive Centre for Hip Arthroscopy

The Hospital claims to be the first to bring this technique to India

Dr Vijay Shetty

Mumbai's Dr LH Hiranandani Hospital recently started offering comprehensive hip arthroscopy service with state-of-the-art equipment.

According to Dr Vijay Shetty, Hip and Knee Surgeon at Dr LH Hiranandani Hospital, who has been trained in Cambridge, UK, "Literature suggests that nearly 40 per cent of the hip disorders are left unrecognised by traditional diagnostic tests, and therefore left untreated. Hip joint is an open surgery and dislocation can be disastrous, more so for young active patients who have the entire career ahead of them. Therefore, any type of minimally-invasive surgery on the hip joint is very attractive and this latest procedure of hip arthroscopy is a boon for patients. It also drastically reduces the requirement of hospital stay to only about 24 to 48 hours and much better pain relief due to procedures performed through the key hole."

Until very recently, any procedure on the hip joint meant open surgery, dislocation of the joint and a minimal hospital stay of about seven to ten days. Keyhole surgery of the hip joint has been tried many years ago, but was discontinued as it was thought that the procedure was very difficult to perform on a ball-and-socket joint. However, late 1990s saw an increased interest, in these procedures, among the surgeons worldwide. This is because there was huge concern among the sports medicine circles about missed diagnosis and treatment by conventional tools.

Now, through hip arthroscopy, with just a tiny puncture wound, the surgeon can insert a pencil-sized optical device into the hip joint. The image from the miniature television camera attached to the arthroscope is projected onto a large video monitor in the operating room, showing the surgeon exactly where to go to correct problems in the joint-or in some cases, to perform corrective procedures. Hip arthroscopy is now performed very regularly in some of the very selective centres across the globe. "Cambridge is perhaps one of the busiest centres in the world where this procedure is performed very regularly, and now we are introducing it in India in a full fledged manner. We have acquired the entire instrumentation set for the first time in India at Hiranandani Hospital," informs Dr Sujit Chatterjee, CEO of Dr LH Hiranandani Hospital.

The facility provides diagnosis and treatment of many hip disorders including previously undiagnosed and untreated sports injuries to sportspersons, hence providing a potential for a new lease of life to their careers that had been crippled due to such injuries.

EH News Bureau