‘We have patients doing triathlons’: How life after joint surgery has changed

Athletes and sports enthusiasts alike dread knee injuries. Even with medical intervention, people typically reinjure the joint.Kevin Stone, MD, founder and surgeon at the Stone Clinic in San Francisco, told “Becker’s ASC Review Podcast” that those days may be almost in the rearview.Note: This is an edited excerpt. Listen to the full podcast episode here.Question: How has joint replacement surgery changed during your career?Dr. Kevin Stone: It’s really changed a lot. We now, by using robotics, can place those joints like resurfacing rather than removing the entire joint. The implant can be designed so the bone grows into the implant, so we’ve gotten rid of bone cement. We’ve gotten rid of all the reasons people couldn’t return to sports. So even after total knee replacements, we have patients doing triathlons and all kinds of sports they never used to think they could do. And we’ve learned that the more the patient exercises, the better they do. The more they build their bone, the more they build their muscle, the less likely they are to wear out the joint.