Orthopedic surgeon Dr. William Payne can recognize when a patient is walking in pain.
To relieve the pain, his diagnosis may be hip or knee replacement at Franciscan Health Olympia Fields, where he and his team use the latest technologies to make certain patients have the best outcomes possible.
Editor’s note: This article is the third in a series of stories that originally were published in the Chronicle’s March 1 health and wellness supplement sponsored by Franciscan Health.
Orthopedic surgeon Dr. William Payne can recognize when a patient is walking in pain.
To relieve the pain, his diagnosis may be hip or knee replacement at Franciscan Health Olympia Fields, where he and his team use the latest technologies to make certain patients have the best outcomes possible.
Over the 23 years of his medical practice, he has been studying and using these improvements for joint replacement surgery. The majority of his surgeries are knee and hip replacements.
“The techniques that we’re using today are better. The incisions are smaller. There are new technologies that relate to the implants themselves and new technologies to help support surgical decision making and intraoperative results,” he said.
Payne, director of orthopedic surgery at Franciscan Health Olympia Fields, was one of the first physicians in the Midwest to use Intellijoint technology, a computer system developed over many years. “Intellijoint uses complex math to make an operation safer and simpler,” the surgeon explained.
The system “helps make sure that we get your leg lengths accurate and replicated, and we’re able to put the components in the best position possible. So, it’s really state-of-the-art technology for hip replacement.”
For knee replacement, Payne is using “patient specific cutting block (techniques) that are computer generated that also allows for optimized alignment in replication of your natural knee.”
After surgery, Payne and his team will get patients up and walking within 24 hours.
“The idea is you want to get the patients up the same day, get them moving. The thing is, if you take their pain away there’s no reason they can’t walk the same day,” the doctor said.
“That’s one of the other advances in joint replacement surgery. We have much better ways of controlling people’s pain using what I’ll refer to as different pain cocktails with the combination of different medicines that make the experience much better,” Payne said.
“We also use regional anesthesia or blocks to make the effective hip or knee numb and super long-acting Novocain which also helps reduce pain for 24 hours.
“So all those things in combination make the experience much less painful than, say, it was in the beginning of my career when we didn’t have those techniques,” he explained. “That makes for a better experience which then makes it possible for you to be able to walk on it because you’re not hurting like people used to.”
In all, recovery will take four to six weeks for patients “to get around pretty good,” Payne said. “I would say three months (recovery) for people to be able to walk around without having to consider it at all in their mind.”
Payne said the procedures and the latest technologies at Franciscan Health are meant to give his patients the best results. “Because in the end, it’s all about having good outcomes, that make you, the patient, happier and healthier.”
To learn more about joint replacement surgery at Franciscan Health visit FranciscanHealth.org/OrthoCare.
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