More than 80% of total knee replacements can last for 25 years
bmj.com
bmj.com
Don’t let that fool you, though. She said the whole ordeal is still awful, and if you don’t do the tearfully painful physical therapy, you pay later. Still says she’d do it again if one wears out.
He warned me, adding that he isn’t trying to scare me, that knee wear and tear is very real and common and that as an active long distance runner and shuttler I’ll probably definitely have to get one if I continue this physical regime till 40-45. I am not sure it’s that inevitable or there are precautions an preventative measures other than stopping those physical activities.
I call bullshit. I’ve been a distance runner since I was 12 (and I’ve done my share of 100 mile weeks) and if there’s a genetic component, see also: Mom. I’m in my 50s, and knees are the least of my worries. Dad’s in his 70s, and his heart limits his running, not knees. He’s not nearly as hard-core as I, but he’s got some marathons under his belt. All anecdata, but probably as grounded in reality as your badminton buddy. Though I admit ignorance to what a shuttler is, so maybe that’s what your buddy is worried about. It ain’t necessarily the running, though.
Do take care of those knees, though. Don’t ignore problems, just like anything else. I’m just saying that though it could be a problem, it is not engraved in stone as far as I can tell from what I’ve read.
"What's more, the demand for [total knee replacement] surgery seems to parallel the rise in overweight and obesity in America. In fact, the study showed weight problems account for 95 percent of the increased demand for knee replacement. https://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=1...
I've recently seen several sites claim that every 1lb of extra weight adds 4lbs of pressure on the knees, so apparently my weight loss has already reduced the pressure on my knees by about 60lbs, which is nice.
I have a long ways to go, though, and for my bad choices the past decade I'm probably going to pay for it with arthritis in the knees when I'm older, unfortunately. But hopefully I'm helping to push the date when that happens to a much later date.
Lots of progress over the years in mfg. the right plastic that doesn't flake off inside your body.
If it works, great. But if there's side-effects like infection, boy, rough.
Can anyone help out?
So, yeah, we could possibly harvest these as well. Although it's not clear that the cost-benefit is worth it in putting in a "used" knee replacement.
I wouldn't see this being viable unless it would last the full 25. Titanium hips, on the other hand, sign me up for a used one.
I mean this could be calculated with relative easy whether it is worth harvesting or not, but I see no difference between harvesting natural organs vs harvesting artificial parts
Also, the wide variation in the price of a knee replacement, even within a single market, suggests that using used hardware is probably not the low-hanging fruit when it comes to reducing the cost. e.g., https://www.bcbs.com/news/press-releases/blue-cross-blue-shi...
Corneas are the exception: they don't provoke an immune response.
I wouldn't recommend waiting for many years to get a 200% improvement when you can get one now that's an 180% improvement and then upgrade later on if you want to.
But we don't know how to reliably say to a cell "now please become a cartilage cell forever" (or please form a tooth etc)
When we know how to achieve that, the biotech revolution will truly begin
Were people expecting the breakthroughs we've already made on the timescale that we've had them? I have a deep ignorance of the field, but from afar it seems like we're on the verge of some truly revolutionary technologies.
So I would take their predictions with a pinch of salt.
Then again, we didn't understand methylation - we are starting to get that.
I expect breakthrough about 5 years after we understand the pathways to differentiation and know how to do/undo methylation.
See Aubrey de Grey Wilt idea- but take it with a pinch of salt too, as cells with short telomeres tend to do bad things and grow cancerous. Think about the opposite: infusions of stem cells turned young again (telomeres), then primed to differentiate into what we want (ex: knee: cartilage)