| A Joint Venture Is the New Hip Thing |
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By JAMES TARANTO Warwick, England I am a natural-born American, but part of me was made in England. I've come to this town, 25 miles southeast of Birmingham, to find out how. The hum of machines is ubiquitous in the Smith & Nephew factory, where the floor is divided into "cells" the size of small rooms, each a self-contained assembly line making a particular part. Workers in a cell transform a dull-gray metal piece, cast at another facility, into a gleaming, perfectly shaped finished product, measured to an accuracy of a few microns. Every part is numbered, so that it can be tracked throughout its lifetime, and inspected and cleaned multiple times before shipment. I am grateful for this precision and care. Two of these parts -- a ball and a matching socket -- are now my right hip.
In 2007 I saw the doctor for a mild but persistent pain in my thigh.
After two months of physical therapy, my hip was so stiff that I could
barely bend over. An MRI revealed avascular necrosis, a localized
degenerative condition in which an insufficiency of blood causes bone
loss and eventually arthritis. Friedrich Boettner, an orthopedic
surgeon at New York's Hospital for Special Surgery, informed me
ominously that X-rays of my femoral head -- the ball of the hip joint
-- showed "signs of collapse," meaning that my hip was too far gone to
save. Before the advent of joint replacement, this condition would have
meant a lifetime of worsening pain. As it was, within eight months of
the diagnosis, I needed a cane and struggled to walk a few city blocks. |
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