Considering Hip Surgery?

The Hana operating room table provides a less invasive procedure, easing pain for hip patients.

Richard Meyer points out that his bad hip affected more people than just him. “The pain was horrible, and your partner isn’t sleeping because you’re tossing and turning and just miserable.”

Meyer is a supervisor at a fertilizer plant and drives semi-trucks in the winter. My hip would ache,” says Meyer, “because you would sit and bounce around.” During the summer, he was limping when he walked, but the turning point came when Meyer almost fell down a flight of 17 stairs at home.”

Finally, Jennifer Erdmann, Meyer’s younger sister who works at Johnson Memorial, convinced him to see a surgeon. Dr. Nwakama is the one who looked at my x-rays and told me I needed a new hip. There were bone spurs, and it was literally bone on bone,” says Meyer.

Before surgery, he engaged in four weeks of physical therapy to help build muscles around his hip. He also tried aspirin, icing, and an electric stimulator. After declining a steroid injection for the pain, he decided to go ahead with the hip replacement. Two weeks later Meyer had surgery.

That’s where the Hana table comes in. It’s a specialized OR table designed for the surgeon to approach the hip from the front or anterior. “It allows the patient to have a less invasive procedure with a faster recovery time,” says Angie Siverhus, perioperative/outreach manager.

The Hana table looks like it’s cut off at the hip. The patient’s feet are seated in boots, and two bars support their legs. “This allows the doctor to manipulate the leg by rotating it and moving it from side to side and up
and down to expose the hip joint easily,” says Siverhus.

Post-surgery, Meyer took four weeks off before returning to work. During that time, “I could still make my daughters’ early basketball games, my son’s football games, and play fetch with the dog,” he says.

Meyer sometimes still feels a slight twinge after using a Bobcat to move snow for a couple of hours. But now he can hit a volleyball around with his kids and run and jump without pain!

Learn more about our orthopedic program.