Joe Tamerantz was barely able to walk when I met him in the Scottsdale office due to his knee problems. He had worked hard his whole life, and was still working in the auto industry when he realized he could not go on any more due to extreme pain. He had very severe knee arthritis with a very bad angular deformity. Every time he put weight on the knee it buckled and gave out. His Boss knew he could not do his job well anymore. Joe was nervous about surgery, but he knew had had no choice – he was too young to live in a wheelchair – and he still wanted to work. Other doctors had passed on his knee because the deformity was too great; they were afraid he might lose his leg in surgery. Joes total knee story began in our office. When I examined Joe, he still had good pulses in his foot, so I knew i could reconstruct him with special components that would realign his leg and give him almost normal knee function. He passed his medical clearance evaluation, and we scheduled the surgery ASAP (He wanted to get back to WORK!) . In surgery we used a rotating platform TC3 knee replacement that re-inforced his absent medial collateral ligament.
The rotating platform total knee is my favorite for active people.
His knee was so deformed, that we had to “bone graft” the inner side of the tibia. We “borrowed” a piece of live bone from the femur resection and “inlayed” it on the medial tibial to create a new flat bone surface to cement a Titanium tibial component with a longer stem for increased stability. The bone healed and re-attached itself to the tibia. Now Joe is walking normally, has great full range of motion, no pain, and he is back to work at his old Job! (He only took a couple of weeks off!). Of course he said what I have heard so many times in the past, ” I wish I had done this years ago!” (Click here to see Joe just 3 weeks post-op!)
See Joe’s Pre-op and postoperative xrays by clicking here
