National, 18th May 2022 : A six times failed hip replacement surgery of a Ghana patient was successfully performed by Dr Vikram Shah, world-renowned joint replacement surgeon, at Krishna Shalby Hospital in Ahmedabad. Besides Dr Vikram Shah, the team of Shalby’s surgeons for this rare surgery included Dr J A Pachore, Director, Hip Surgery, Dr Amish Kshatriya, Senior Joint Replacement Surgeon and Dr Pranay Gujjar, Joint Replacement Surgeon. Mrs. Nansata Salifu from Bolgatanga town in Ghana is 65 years old. Mother of four, she is a retired midwife. Her husband is a financial economist. After a fall in December 2016 in which she suffered hip fracture, Mrs. Salifu was operated for hip replacement for the first time in early 2017 in Bawku in Ghana, but it got infected.
Then she sought treatment from another hospital in Kumasi, a large city of Ghana. However, this surgery too was a failure. Through the course of next two and a half years she endured a series of five failed hip replacement surgeries at the same hospital, which were one failure after another. In total, Mrs. Salifu underwent six failed hip replacement surgeries in Ghana. Her condition had been worsening with each repeated surgery.
Hip replacement is a surgery in which the damaged cartilage and bone is removed from the hip joint and replaced with artificial components. At times, hip replacement implants can wear out for various reasons and may need to be replaced with the help of a revision hip replacement surgery. However, this usually happens after 15-20 years of surgery.
But this was not the case in Mrs. Salifu’s case. In her case the cause was recurrent hip joint dislocation. Her hip was dislocated after six failed surgeries with almost 3 cm shortening of the leg. She had intense pain, walked with limp, and shortening of leg. Her movement was severely restricted, and she had intense pain in her hip. Her quality of life had suffered a lot because of this problem, and she had problems in carrying out even her daily chores.
Revision hip replacement is normally a more challenging and complex procedure than the first surgery, and her accident and repeated failed surgeries had made this even more difficult and challenging.
Dr Vikram Shah says, “We revised her acetabulum (socket of the hip bone in which the femur fits) with special instrumentation with no bone loss. Larger size cup and screws were used to fix the socket and special kind of plastic liner was used to prevent future dislocation. Revision surgery sometimes also requires bone grafting, for which we need large amount of bone. At Shalby we have a bone bank for this. She was kept on bed rest for 3 weeks for healing. After this, she was made to walk with walker support. And after six weeks she could walk without limp, shortening of leg and pain.”
Mrs. Salifu’s daughter says, “My mother had undergone several failed surgeries, and then we were referred Dr Vikram Shah and Shalby Hospital. Her surgery here has been a success now and she can walk again. Our whole family is very happy at this. I thank Dr Vikram Shah and Krishna Shalby Hospital for this.”
This kind of surgery requires special instruments, special joint implant, well-equipped class 100 operation theatre set-up and above all a surgeon with extensive experience of performing revision hip replacement surgeries.
Dr Vikram Shah says further, “At Shalby we perform almost 10,000 joint replacement surgeries in a year, which is highest in the world. Along with primary surgeries, we also get a large number of complex cases for revision surgeries from all across the world. About 250 of these are complex and revision hip replacement surgeries. Each case has a challenge of its own, but this particular case was unique and difficult as the patient had undergone surgeries six times already. We are happy she has been treated after five long years and can now lead a pain-free life.”
