BY DENISE WILLIAMS Tribune Staff Writer

Lakeway Regional Hospital recently received a specialized table which will allow patients to receive revolutionary hip replacement surgery. The OSI PROfx table offers a positioning option not possible with conventional tables. According to HealthStar Physicians orthopedic surgeon Dr. Stefan Prada, the trend in recent years is for minimally-invasive hip and knee surgery.

For hip replacement surgeries, this necessitated either incisions in the front and back of the hip, or a single incision in the back. In either case, major muscles holding the hip in place had to be cut, increasing blood loss and recovery time. With the new OSI PROfx table, Prada will now be able to replace a patient's hip without cutting any muscles at all. "By going in from the front, I can just push the muscles aside," the surgeon said. Because the hip remains stable, patients are allowed to walk right away and can be released from the hospital in as little as two days-50-60 percent less time than required by traditional hip replacement surgery. "The recovery time is cut in half," Prada said.

Lakeway Area residents are among the few in the state who will have access to this improved hip replacement surgery. Lakeway Regional Hospital (LRH) is the first East Tennessee hospital to acquire this specialized table. For now, Prada is the only orthopedic surgeon in East Tennessee performing this cutting edge procedure and one of only two in the entire state. "The OSI PROfx table will revolutionize hip replacement surgery in this entire region," said Priscilla Mills, LRH CEO. "To be the first healthcare facility to offer this procedure to patients in all of East Tennessee is an incredible honor and it humbling to us as healthcare providers to be able to witness someone walking again, in only a few days." Although the basic procedures of the surgery remain the same, Prada said, "We're putting them in in a new way." The doctor said anyone with arthritis of the hip is a candidate the new procedure, even heavier patients who were not good candidates for the traditional surgery. "With this table, we can take all comers," he said.

"Today, doctors are focusing on ways to help reduce recovery time and improve comfort after the operations," Prada said. "Every patient responds differently, but our goal is to cut the three-month recovery time in half or more." For more information about hip replacement surgery with the new OSI PROfx table, contact Dr. Stefan Prada at (423) 586-7509 or Lakeway Regional Hospital at (423) 522-6000.