Guests at the live broadcast seminar Photo: Courtesy of BJU
On June 3, Beijing United Family Hospital and Clinics (BJU) held a live broadcast seminar of a minimally invasive hip replacement surgery. Suleman Qurashi, an expert in hip replacement from Australia, performed the operation on a 44-year-old German male patient. The whole process was live broadcasted through news portal Tencent News.
Bai Xizhuang, the head of The People's Hospital of Liaoning Province, Xia Bing, the head of the SuperPATH Training Center at Zhejiang Provincial People's Hospital and Lu Jike, the head of the department of orthopedics at BJU were invited to the seminar. Lang Ping, the chief coach of the national Chinese Women Volleyball Team also showed up at the seminar and shared her experience of the recent hip replacement surgery.
Bai Xizhuang, Suleman Qurashi and Lu Jike during the event Photo: Courtesy of BJU
According to Qurashi, during the minimally invasive hip replacement surgery, the patient lost about 200 milliliters of blood, much less than ordinary hip replacement surgeries. What is more surprising is that the patient was able to walk within two hours of the surgery. The patient said that there was no sharp pain when he walked, and that he had no difficulty walking.
According to Lu, SuperPATH is a format of minimally invasive hip replacement surgery. The wound is about six centimeters, and the extortor groups of joint capsule and hip joint are kept intact during the surgery. SuperPATH has the advantage of saving the patients' muscle structure, shortening surgery time, simplifying the surgical process, reduced bleeding and helping patients recover sooner. Also, the patients have much less difficulty walking after the surgery.
"Most patients who have undergone the SuperPATH surgery can move their hip joints after waking up from the anesthesia, which greatly lowers the risk of lower-limb deep venous thrombosis and pulmonary embolism," Lu said. "Also SuperPATH surgeries can be performed on overweight patients due to the clearer surgical visualization and anatomical structure of traditional surgeries."
In addition, patients accepting SuperPATH stay in the hospital for a much shorter time and the cost is lower. According to a 2014 survey published by International Orthopaedics on 479 cases of SuperPATH surgeries in North America, the average length of time for a patient to stay in the hospital is 1.6 days. Over 91 percent of the surveyed patients went home within this time frame, while in traditional surgeries only 27.3 percent of patients were able to return home to recover after their surgery.
Lang Ping and BJU general manager Sylvia Pan Photo: Courtesy of BJU
Lang said she accepted a traditional hip replacement surgery on January 19. It was her 11th surgery due to a sport injury. She began recovery training the day after the surgery. After 40 days, she could walk without a cane and participate in some gym sports like cycling and swimming.
"Minimally invasive hip joint surgery seems to be better, and if I knew that, I'd have done it earlier instead of the traditional type," she said at the seminar.
At the seminar, Qurashi was hired as a special expert in the department of orthopedics at BJU. Qurashi will be based in BJU, and he will lead his team in performing more SuperPATH surgeries for patients in China.