Between his job as a pilot and his love of sports, George Hine put his shoulders through the ringer.
“I developed arthritis years ago and it just kept getting worse,” says Hine.
It was clear he needed surgery, but like many people Hine put it off.
“I can’t even count the number of times that I have patients come into my office who have had profound arthritis of their shoulder and have chosen to live with it, be even in excruciating pain because they heard that the procedure was so painful,” explains Dr. John Mehalik, an orthopedic surgeon on medical staff of Lee Memorial Health System.
Eventually Hine’s shoulder pain got so bad he couldn’t shrug it off.
“It was pretty excruciating pain. I’d roll over on it and then I couldn’t get off of it. I’d have to wake my wife up and have her push me back over.
A game-changer for many people is a new option for post-op pain. By taking their pain relief with them, many patients are able to skip a hospital stay, undergoing a shoulder replacement and returning home the same day.
“To even consider it as an outpatient was predicated on the idea of using some advanced anesthesia technique to be able to help manage pain,” Dr. Mehalik says.
The solution: an in-dwelling pain catheter.
“The anesthesiologist places a small catheter in between several of the muscles in the neck where the nerves that exit the spinal cord and then enter the shoulder pass through. That little catheter drips in a specific amount of numbing medicine over those nerves over the first 72 hours after the surgery, making the surgery essentially pain free.”
“They attached that to me and we did the surgery at approximately 7 o’clock in the morning and I walked out of that hospital at 4 o’clock that afternoon; went home. And it was great,” says Hine.
The catheter feeds into an exterior ball containing the anesthetic, pre-loaded to last 3 days; at the end of which the patient can slide the device out themselves.
“I would highly recommend it to anybody doing this,” says Hine.
Using less medication, Hine learned he could undergo his surgery, without shouldering pain.
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Lee Memorial Health System in Fort Myers, FL is the largest network of medical care facilities in Southwest Florida and is highly respected for its expertise, innovation and quality of care. For nearly a century, we’ve been providing our community with everything from primary care treatment to highly specialized care services and robotic assisted surgeries.
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