Robotic arm helps doctors avoid performing full knee replacements
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New technology comes to north carolina – in the form of a robot.
Orthopedic surgeons at Lake Norman Regional Medical Center use a robotic arm to resurface a portion of an arthritic knee without doing a complete knee replacement. There are only five centers in North Carolina to use this technique.
Dr. James McDonald says for a patient who doesn't want a complete knee replacement, this procedure is faster and will get them back to work more quickly, usually within a month.
"The excitement is the precision that we have not had before in placement of the prosthesis of the resurfacing material that we use. That with this virtual 3-D modeling, we're able to precisely plan before we even make a bone cut where that prosthesis is going to go. And then using robotic arm technology, able to mill the bone so we only remove a portion of the arthritic bone that we want to without having to do multiple steps or multiple cuts," McDonald said.
McDonald says while it will only be about a month before patients can get back to work, it usually only takes two weeks before patients are walking without help.
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It's not a shot in the knee, but in the arm that's the focus of a recent CDC report. It looks as if children aren't the only ones who need vaccinations.
The Centers for Disease Control reports many adults skip out on immunizations. A new report shows in 2010, fewer than 20 percent of people at high risk for developing pneumonia got vaccinated. Just more than 10 percent of people between ages 19 and 49 got a hepatitis a shot.
Still, the CDC reports it did see slight increases in the number of people who got the HPV and shingles immunizations.
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More and more older people are contracting sexually transmitted diseases, according to a new study published in the British Medical Journal.
Researchers say 80 percent of people ages 50 to 90 are sexually active and cases of sexually transmitted diseases among this age group have more than doubled during the past 10 years.
Researchers say older women tend to be more vulnerable to STDs because of post-menopausal changes.