‘Covid recovered patients prone to orthopaedic complications’

Hyderabad: Covid-19 recovered patients are prone to orthopaedic complications like osteonecrosis of the hip, which damages hip joint and could also cause severe arthritis, senior orthopaedic surgeons at a Arthroplasty Arthroscopy Summit-2022 (AAS), organised by Apollo Hospitals, Secunderabad, and Apollo Institute of Medical Sciences and Research (AIMSR), on Sunday, said.

Cases of osteonecrosis are being reported among individuals aged between 20 years and 30 years. “Hip replacement is a gold-standard for treating necrosis. However, since a majority of the patients are from a young age group, hip replacement is usually not recommended. There are modern techniques that provide safe alternatives to such patients,” senior joint replacement surgeons from Apollo Hospitals, Dr Aachi Mithin and Dr N Somashekhar Reddy, said.

In the training program, the faculty highlighted new therapeutics including pain portal injections, which involves injecting of safe local medications in small quantities at various spots to produce long lasting relief to patients. Such injections are giving good midterm to long term relief from pain, Dr L Prakash, Director and Chief of Orthopaedics, Institute for Special Orthopaedics, Palakkad, Kerala, said.