Outpatient Arthroplasty – Dr. Thomas Ferro

Posted by Mike Balster

Lisa Evan introduced Dr. Thomas Ferro with an impressive list of achievements and exemplary professional and educational accomplishments.

Dr. Ferro emphasized a unicompartmental and bicompartmental knee replacement as opposed to a total knee replacement. As recent as 1991 everyone needing a knee or hip replacement got a total replacement. Today, only the damaged or worn part of the knee is replaced. Replacement is no longer an accurate term since knees are resurfaced today.

A dentist and doctor pioneered an arthroscopic knee surgery in which a microscope was used through a small incision to recondition the knee. A model of the patient's knee is constructed using an MRI so the appliance to be used for resurfacing is ready and fits perfectly during the outpatient procedure.

The patients are ambulatory immediately after surgery and a study in England showed 94% of these surgeries still worked well with same activity levels after 15 years. An added benefit of this type of surgery is less bone loss so the ACL ligament can be saved allowing increase activity levels in the patient.

The knee resurfacing outpatient procedure isn't yet covered by medical insurances but that should change as the reduced cost makes the outpatient procedure very attractive.