Word: femur
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Charnley, a surgeon at England's Wrightington Hospital in Wigan, was not the first physician to replace part of the hip's ball-and-socket joint. Doctors had long been substituting a stainless-steel ball for the head of the femur, or thighbone. But even after the introduction of better bone cements eliminated one problem-the tendency of the new head to work loose-the results of the operation were often unsatisfactory. Because body fluids provided inadequate lubrication and even corroded the implants, friction between the ball and its socket caused both to wear...
Behind His Back. When a hip joint is damaged, the ball of bone at the head of the femur may rub against the roughened surface of the socket in the hip proper (see diagram), causing severe and immobilizing pain. Replacing the head of the femur with a stainless steel ball (just under an inch in diameter for the average patient) is relatively easy. The difficulty is to secure the ball to the femur. In early operations, the shaft holding the ball was screwed into the femur. Charnley was dissatisfied with the method because the shaft sometimes came loose. A dentist...
...morning checkup, swung his legs from under the covers to get up. Drowsy and unaccustomed to the high hospital bed, Everett Dirksen went sprawling onto the vinyl floor of his third-floor V.I.P. suite, instantly felt a pain shoot along his hip. The diagnosis: a fracture of the right femur...
...four operations, a month or more apart, he shortened first one thigh, then the other, then one lower leg, then the other. The surgery involved sawing out almost four inches of the single bone (femur) in each thigh and about 3½ in. of the two bones (tibia and fibula) in the legs. The extra lengths of arteries and veins, muscles and tendons, had to be squeezed in and left to "take up the slack" by a gradual, concertina-like contraction...
...injury. But Namath gamely kept trying. No matter how much it hurts, he will have to repeat that exercise scores of times a day. Hundreds of times a day he will have to contract the big quadriceps muscle that runs down the front of the thigh, tying together the femur, kneecap and tibia. With knee bent and also extended, he will lift weights on his right foot. By July, if all goes well, he should be ready for practice, and for the rigors of professional football...