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Knee Replacement Recovery: New Study Shows that Many Patients are in Severe Pain

Knee replacement surgery recovery is a big deal. After all, the surgery involves the amputation of the knee joint and then the insertion of a prosthesis. As a result, knee replacement has been associated with side effects like a massive increase in heart attack risk right after the surgery. In addition, I’ve heard stories from…read more

More Hip Resurfacing Side Effects: A Third of Hip Resurfacing Patients Have a Local Reaction to their Implant!

Are there hip resurfacing side effects? Hip resurfacing involves taking a metal piece and placing it on the end of the femur and then also replacing the socket of the hip joint. This configuration was initially thought to be much better than amputating the entire hip joint including the femur and replacing it in a…read more

Fat Stem Cell Arthritis Claims? Is Light Activation of Fat Stem Cells Just Another Gimmick or the Real Deal?

Fat stem cells and arthritis? This past month, I’ve shown that we have very little animal or human data that fat stem cells help arthritis. Despite this, there’s been an explosion in companies selling fat stem cell kits to doctors that are used to treat arthritis. About three years ago, I first heard about a…read more

Blind Ankle Injection: 1 in 4 Times a Physician isn’t Really Injecting the Ankle Joint

Have you had a blind ankle injection? I’ve blogged a few times on the fact that blind injections (injections without some form of guidance like fluoroscopy or ultrasound) have significant miss rates. In other words, the doctor thinks he’s injecting something inside the knee or ankle joint, but he’s missed the joint capsule (inside of the…read more

Orthotics and Knee Pain? Big Study gets It Wrong…

Orthotics Knee Pain? I’ve blogged before on the debate over whether orthotics help knee pain or knee arthritis. A very large study that looked at foot positioning and knee pain recently found that there was an association for flat feet. This fit with a 2011 study showing the same thing. Now a New England Journal of Medicine…read more

NBA Players Find that there is No Such Thing as Achilles Tendon Surgery Recovery-Why Are We Still Operating on Many Achilles Tendon Tears?

A recent study published this past week showed that NBA basketball players with an Achilles tendon tear rarely return to high level play despite arguably the best and most sophisticated surgical care on earth. Huh? I thought if anybody could engineer an Achilles tendon surgery recovery, it would be these guys. At the end of the…read more

Fish Oil Reduces Rheumatoid Arthritis Risk in Women in New Study

Fish oil has had a great few years and a rough month.  After fish oil was hailed by many as almost a miracle supplement for many ailments involving chronic inflammation like arthritis, this past month a single study showed that it could be associated with a slight uptick in prostate cancer risk. While the prostate…read more

Knee Meniscus Repair: The Great White Whale

Most patients who I have spoken to believe that their meniscus surgery was a knee meniscus repair. So was it? Not so much. How do we know? A recent study confirms that, despite the term being used liberally, what’s frequently done is often chopping out pieces of the torn meniscus rather than repairing anything. First…read more