Latest news with #kneereplacement
RNZ News
4 days ago
- Health
- RNZ News
'It's very therapeutic for the people' - first full knee replacement surgery in Far North town
Erica Whyte and her surgeon Dr Rob Coup. Photo: Supplied / Health NZ A woman who has had the first full knee replacement surgery in the Far North town of Kaitaia says being able to have the operation in her own community - supported by whanau - was a "therapeutic" and "holistic" experience. Kaitaia Hospital has recently become the first rural hospital in Northland to have capacity for knee replacement surgery - years after hip joint replacement surgery first became available in Kaitaia in 2018. Health New Zealand (HNZ) said the achievement is a major step forward in expanding advanced surgical care closer to home for Far North residents. Surgeons travel to Kaitaia from Whangārei once every one to two weeks to do the operations. Seventy-year-old Coopers Beach local Erica Whyte, who had her left knee operated on in Whangārei in 2019, said the surgery on her right knee last month was a much more comfortable experience. "Being close to the hospital, being part of the big whanau community up in the far north, and going to a local hospital and having surgery there, it was totally different to driving down to Whangārei, anybody wanted to visit me was a four hour round-trip, Kaitaia was half an hour to come visit me," she said. "Just the ability to be able to be in your own community, to have medical treatment, it's just holistic and it's very therapeutic for the people," she added. Four weeks on from the operation, Whyte said she can now walk without aid and has a 100 percent bend in her knee. Whyte said she was stoked for locals, particularly those living on the Aupōuri Peninsula - who would have needed to travel three hours on a bumpy road to get to Whangārei for treatment. "When you're only a few days post surgery, it's a painful operation, it's not something you want to spend two or three hours sitting in a car on the way home, so for me to spend half an hour [being driven] home, was fantastic," she said. The Kaitaia theatre team with Dr Coup. Photo: Supplied / Health NZ Whyte, who has arthritis, said she first got onto the waiting list for knee replacement in 2018, and it was over a year's wait until she got her more severely affected left knee replaced in late 2019. She said the pain in her right knee was manageable for some years, until it deteriorated in the middle of last year when she became reliant on a walking pole, painkillers and anti-inflammatories. Whyte saw a doctor in July last year, but it was not until February this year that she got her first specialist appointment to discuss knee surgery options. She said she was initially told that it would take 10-15 months for her to get surgery done. But the opportunity to be selected as an ideal candidate for the first knee replacement surgery in Kaitaia brought her surgery forward by about a year. Whyte said she was told by the doctor that she was suitable for the operation in Kaitaia, as she had no co-morbidities like diabetes, which meant her operation was lower risk for an operation at Kaitaia Hospital where there was no back up ICU. HNZ general manager surgical services in Te Tai Tokerau Katy Wilkinson said the recruitment of three new orthopaedic surgeons to Northland in January has been key to making this complex procedure possible. "Having these three new orthopaedic surgeons is just a wonderful asset for our team, it's growing the future of our care across Northland, particularly in Kaitaia," she said. HNZ said the additional surgeons means an average of 160 more orthopaedic patients can be seen in a month, across a range of specialities, including diabetic foot clinics. Wilkinson said the surgeons usually stay for a couple of days when they visit Kaitaia - doing operations as well as attending to outpatient appointments. When asked how many knee surgeries can be done in Kaitaia in a year, Wilkinson said they're aiming to complete 12 to 24 operations yearly. She said the number will depend on the availability of the surgeons, how urgent the patients' case is, and how long they've been waiting for. Wilkinson said hundreds of people are on the wait list for knee surgery across Northland. Kaitaia Hospital has two operating theatres, eight day-surgery beds and three recovery beds. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
CBC
20-05-2025
- Health
- CBC
Faster surgeries
A possible solution to cut the wait list for Canadians in need of hip and knee replacement surgeries
CBC
20-05-2025
- Health
- CBC
It's much faster to get hip or knee replacements if there's a central waitlist: study
Canadians who need a hip or knee replacement could get the surgery more quickly — without adding to health-care budgets or opening more operating rooms — if central waitlists were created, the author of a new study says. The findings, published in Tuesday's issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, suggest it's significantly faster to add patients to a central list where they can see any surgeon in their area, compared to each surgeon having their own waitlists. Right now in Ontario, a primary care provider, such as your family doctor, refers you to a surgeon or physiotherapist to decide whether surgery is needed. If it is, you'll be put on one surgeon's waiting list, which could be long or short. Often, it's a long wait — in Canada, only two-thirds of patients receive their hip replacement within the 26-week recommended standard, according to data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information. For knee replacements, only 59 per cent are done within that time. So that's prompted some provinces to experiment with how they assign surgery patients to waitlists, with the goal of shortening overall wait times. For the study, Dr. David Urbach, head of the surgery department at Women's College Hospital in Toronto, and his team compared three models based on data collected from more than 17,000 patients across Ontario who were referred for hip or knee replacements in 2017. The three models were: Option 1: A family doctor refers you for assessment to a pool of surgeons or physiotherapists in the part of the province where you live. If you need surgery, you're assigned a surgeon and put on their waitlist. Option 2: The family doctor refers you to a specific surgeon or physiotherapist to decide whether surgery is needed. If you need an operation, then you're put in a pool for the next available surgeon in the part of the province where you live. Option 3: A combination of the first two: Your family doctor puts the request for assessment into a central pool — and, if you need surgery, you enter a second pool that includes all the qualified surgeons in your area and would see the next one available. Currently, patients awaiting joint replacements are like customers at a grocery store, Urbach said in an interview — they're stuck in a line, even if another checkout opens up. But the better option for surgery would be akin to going to the bank, where everybody moves through a common line and waits the shortest possible time. WATCH | Hospital replaces hips in 35 minutes: How a hospital is doing hip replacements in 35 minutes 1 year ago Duration 4:52 Toronto's Humber River Hospital has started using a new model to get more hip replacement patients through the operating room. CBC's Christine Birak breaks down how hyper-throughput surgeries work and why the hospital says it's the type of innovation provinces should invest in. When it comes to wait times, Urbach said the study found that random factors can crop up and slow down one surgeon — like one having an already long wait list and limited operating room time in a more rural area. Shorter waits with new system Priority for joint replacement surgery also depends on criteria like the degree of pain and disability and the risk of a worse outcome with a delay in surgery. In Ontario, the goal is for a patient to wait no longer than six months for a consultation, with the maximum wait for the surgery itself being another six months, the researchers said. For top priority cases, 90 days is the target wait time for those on a single surgeon's list, while the study found that comparable patients in the regional pool made it through in 84 days. In the study, Option 3 — where there was a central intake for consultation and for surgery — nearly halved wait times for the vast majority of patients in all regions, ranging from 111 fewer days in Toronto (from 257 to 146 days) to 281 days in Ontario West (from 536 to 255 days). Much of the wait time for joint replacements was for the surgery itself and not the consultation, the researchers found. "Unless you introduce a team-based model of care, you just have to wait until a spot opens up and that could be very long," Urbach said. "That could be a year, year-and-a-half or longer." Getting surgeons to buy in Canadians may have heard of team-based primary care, where patients have access to a well-connected interprofessional team such as family doctors, nurse practitioners, social workers and dietitians. Similarly, in team-based surgical care, a group of surgeons takes the next patient in order of priority, even if a patient's particular surgeon has a very long list, Urbach said. Asked what kind of reaction surgeons have given to team-based surgical care so far, Urbach said many are skeptical about moving away from keeping their own list of patients. "They're concerned that they'll lose their source of referrals," Urbach said. Dr. Olufemi Ayeni, president of the Canadian Orthopaedic Association and an orthopedic surgeon at McMaster, said he sees that view dissipating among those in the profession. "I think there will be some openness and there's definitely been a culture shift within orthopedics," Ayeni said. "We don't like hearing about patients who are suffering, needing pain medications. It feeds into other concerns [such as] opioid use." The study's authors acknowledged that unless surgeons believe that team-based models of care are beneficial to them and do not threaten their autonomy or opportunities for income and professional advancement, "these models of care are unlikely to be viable in Canadian health systems in which physicians are highly independent." Ayeni agreed, saying otherwise the response to team-based care among surgeons will be muted. Mohamed Alarakhia, a family physician and managing director of the non-profit eHealth Centre for Excellence in Kitchener, Ont., uses e-referrals for specialists. Alarakhia said it has already reduced orthopedic wait times by 54 days. Wait times across Canada Using a central intake for both assessment and surgeries equalizes wait times overall among surgeons, Alarakhia said. "We have examples in this province of where we've figured it out and across the country where they've done central intake," Alarakhia said, giving Quebec and Alberta as examples. "I believe we can solve these problems if we get some of these things in place." Health PEI said it's now adopting a centralized waitlist management system for surgical care, including hip and knee replacements.
