Military Officer - June 2006 - (Page 54)

Knee replacement For years, Ed Dean, who served in the Navy as a machinist during the Korean War, coped with worsening arthritis in his knees by trying every over-thecounter remedy he could ﬁnd, from muscle rubs to dietary supplements. Dean ﬁnally sought medical intervention with cortisone shots, which provided some relief. “But then, the pain came back twice as bad,” he says. Still, he avoided surgery, especially after hearing about friends’ painful knee replacement procedures. By 2005, however, he was barely able to walk, and he realized surgery could be his only option. Dean’s search for a surgeon who could get him back on his feet as soon as possible led him to Dr. Jess Lonner, director of Minimally Invasive Knee Surgery at Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia. In May 2005, Lonner performed a bilateral total knee replacement, giving Dean two new knees in one surgical procedure. As in traditional surgery, Lonner replaced the arthritic ends of Dean’s thigh and shinbones with prosthetic caps. The difference is how he did it — instead of making one long cut, he worked through an incision only a few inches long using an arthroscope, a telescopic device that allowed him to view a magniﬁed image of the knee joint on a video screen. He also spared the quadriceps tendons and muscles, which are cut in traditional procedures. It’s the healing of the muscle and tendon that causes much of the pain of recuperation, and leaving them intact allows for less blood loss and a faster recovery. To his surprise, Dean found he could stand unassisted within hours after surgery, and the next day he was walking without crutches. Because of an unusual reaction to the anesthesia, he stayed in the hospital for a week to recover. “During all that time, however, I had no pain in my knees, apart from some discomfort from the surgical staples,” he says. Dean went through two months of physical therapy; after about a month, all that remained of his once-excruciating pain was some minor stiffness. “I’m 73, but I can keep up with a 40-year-old,” he says. “My only regret is that I didn’t have this done earlier.” Prostate surgery For 14 years, Kenneth Klocek, a retired Navy captain, took medication to treat the symptoms of benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), which affects almost half of all men over age 50. BPH causes the prostate to enlarge and put pressure on the urethra, resulting in difﬁculty urinating or a constant need to urinate. Gradually, the medications lost their effectiveness, so Klocek sought help from Dr. Tim Donahue, a urologist at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. Klocek assumed he would have the standard procedure for BPH, a transurethral resection of the prostate, or TURP, in which excess prostate tissue is cut away. But Donahue offered him another option: GreenLight laser surgery, which involves inserting a thin ﬁber-optic probe through the urethra and into the prostate while the patient is under general or spinal anesthesia. The probe delivers targeted laser energy that gently and precisely vaporizes excess tissue, relieving the pressure around the urethra and reestablishing normal urine ﬂow. “The GreenLight does the exact same thing as a TURP procedure, with less blood loss, less tissue damage, and a faster recovery time,” says Donahue. “Almost anyone with BPH would be eligible — if you can have a TURP, you can have the GreenLight procedure.” At ﬁrst, Klocek was hesitant, but online research helped convince him to have it done in June 2005. The experience wasn’t pain-free — he spent one night in the hospital, and it took about a week before he could urinate without pain. But he was able to stop taking BPH medication immediately, and today, he’s symptom-free. “Don’t delay, and don’t be bashful about visiting your urologist,” Klocek advises men who are suffering from BPH symptoms. “I’d have the procedure done again, and I wish I’d had it done sooner.” 54 MILITARY OFFICER JUNE 2006

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Military Officer - June 2006 Contents From the Editor President’s Page Your Views MOAA Directory Rapid Fire Washington Scene Financial Forum Ask the Doctor Chapter Activities MOAA Member Services Living Well 5 Foods for Life The Kindest Cut Winning the Battle Cover Story: Choppers Pages of History Information Exchange Advertising Index MOAA Scholarship Donors Member Books MOAA Calendar Sounding Taps Encore

Military Officer - June 2006

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