Need Orthopedist Recommendation (Arlington, Springfield, Winchester: home, living, restaurant)

[ecd23889]

Can anyone recommend an Orthopedist for hip replacement surgery? Would love to hear your experiences - good and bad. I am very nervous about having this done, but am now walking with great difficulty even with a cane.
I had Synvisc injections into my joints about 3 months ago and am now practically crippled. I had joint pain before, but could get around ok. Since the injections I have gone steadily downhill.
Any recommendations - on who to go to OR who to avoid would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks, ecd

[Pandoras]

I am not sure if he does hip replacement but I have seen Dr. Annunziata at Commonwealth Orthopedics. I had a good experience. I found out about him through my coworker who had an ACL tear.

Commonwealth Orthopaedics: Christopher C. Annunziata, MD

[ACWhite]

A friend had a hip replacement and is doing very well. Her surgeon is Dr. Charles Anderson Engh, Jr., (703) 892-6500, on Army Navy Drive in Arlington. She said he had a long waiting list.

Another possibility is Dr. Brian George Evans at Georgetown Hospital in DC, (202) 444-8766. He was the first to correctly diagnose my knee problem. I don't know anyone who has had surgery with him, though. He has good ratings on checkbook.org.

[LVMYDACH]

My husband, sister and brother-in-law have gone to Dr. Thomas Martinelli, also with Commonwealth Orthopaedics (Springfield Office). He has done knee surgery on two of them with excellent results. Looking at the Commonwealth Orthopaedics web site it shows that Dr. Martinelli specializes in hip surgery and also has been on Top Doctor Lists.

[Electron]

Head out to Winchester and see Dr. Wise (either one of them...Father/Son team)at Winchester Orthopedic Assoc.
You will be satisfied.

[saganista]

Synvisc is a coin-flip. Sometime the shot will bring blessed relief for a few weeks, sometimes it will seem to do almost nothing at all. Hip replacement is obviously major surgery, and there's no way that people believe any of those 6-8 week recovery predictions. But today is seven weeks since total right hip replacement and the patient drove out for lunch today with coworkers (after physical therapy, of course) and had a wonderful time. Walking upright without a cane now and the only pain is muscle soreness from all that PT. Back to work next week. Holy cow! I'd say that's what to focus on. The surgery and the recovery are the price for getting your life back. Not a bad bargain at all.

Here's my take --

First two weeks: Very, very hard. Figure three days in the hospital. Therapy will start there 36 to 48 hours after surgery. Everything will hurt at first, but that will soon begin to get better, thanks in part to pain meds. Try to lose the morphine drip sometime on the second post-surgical day (Thu if surgery was Tue). You don't have to go home until you feel ready, but when you do, you will absolutley need a 24/7 caregiver. (And a handicapped sticker for the car -- talk to the surgeon's office about that). You will need very nearly constant attention and will not be able to do anything at all on your own. Since it will take two people for a while, you will not be able to get to the bathroom in time when you wake in the middle of the night. That's life. Stairs will be all but insurmountable. Make a no-stairs plan before surgery. You will need a comfortable chair where your hip can sit higher than your knee. Add pillows as necessary to accomplish this. You will live in that chair. You will need to elevate your feet also. You can take showers sitting in a bathtub chair. You should get one of those. A vertical grip that fastens to the side of the tub will be a big help also. Showers will be like heaven. Likely a therapist will come to your home for 75 minutes or so three days a week. Simple stuff, but it will be hard to do. You will start to hear the phrase "Trust the hip" a lot.

Next two weeks: Things start to get a lot better. It's still hard, but you can get yourself out of bed. You can sort of mostly dress yourself (no sock or shoe on the surgical side). You become a master of getting around over short distances on the walker. You will start going to therapy at their place, and the therapist will promptly tell you that you need to lose the walker and start using a cane. The thought horrifies you, but in fact, you can do it just fine if you try. You start to find that you can do a lot of things if you try. Cook. Feed yourself. Still can't pick things up when you drop them though. Grrr!!!

Next two weeks: Not out of the woods, but you can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Caregiver starts to be needed less and less. You can handle routine tasks and needs on your own. At some point, you will go out to a restaurant. At some point, you can probably drive, even if it's your right hip. The question isn't strength, but reflexes. Can you get your foot to move from pedal to pedal fast enough. Try it at low speed in an empty parking lot. You know what it's supposed to feel like. See if it does. You will be walking upright and, whether with the cane or not, taking an actual stride, where your feet alternate evenly and cover about the same distance in each step. People who see you for the first time since surgery will say things like "OMG, look at you!!!". They remember the Hunchback of Notre Dame days. Those days are long gone.

Thereafter: Putting all the pieces back together. You still need help with a few things, but are mostly mobile and independent. It feels really good.

[michgc]

Wow, Saganista, hope you are back to your normal routine in no time. That does not sound like fun. But I'm sure it will all be worth it.

[saganista]

Getting there! Yay! Just wanted to raise a few FYI's for the OP from a rather fresh perspective. It's just one case of course, but the whole thing has been both harder (especially those first two weeks) and faster than expected. Doing as much planning and preparation as possible in advance is important. You really do need the full-time (24/7) help of a caregiver. You go from keeping yourself from trying to do too much to trying to push yourself beyond what you think is possible in the space of just a few weeks. There's a while in there when you don't know which mode you're actually supposed to be in. The therapy people slowly work wonders. Trust them, and of course, trust the hip. All in all, it's a big step and a lot of hard work, but in the end, it's HUGELY worth it. Thirty or forty years ago, you and your pain would simply have been consigned to a wheelchair and within ten years, you'd have contracted pneumonia and died. Today, you can go back to living your perfectly normal and pain-free life within a few months. Amazing!

As for the original question, pretty much every surgeon with any history of doing hip replacements is going to be perfectly competent. It becomes a matter of which one you feel most comfortable with. In this particular area, Commonwealth Orthopaedics does have a signficant and deserved reputation for quality care. They've done work on our whole family, from broken bones to knee scopes to carpal tunnel surgery, and now to hip replacement. Great work and results every time as far as we can tell, but others are out there doing the same thing as well.