A new support donated to the team who perform knee replacement surgery at St Cross will help the service undertake even more procedures and improves the patient experience!
Larissa Belgrove, Operating Department Practitioner at the Hospital of St Cross, explained: “Most patients are awake during knee surgery, but we need to be able to safely move their leg during different stages of the procedure.
“Thanks to the new leg support, the surgical team can now quickly and accurately position the patient’s leg prior to and during the operation. It is a great device as it is easy to use and requires less setting up time.
Alistair Nutting, Associate Group Manager for Trauma and Orthopaedics and the Hospital of St Cross, added “This new equipment means we can reduce the length of the average procedure. As a result, we hope to be able to offer more operations each day. The surgical team now undertake over 80% of all knee replacements at St Cross. Because the six theatres at St Cross are only used for elective surgery such as this, the likelihood of operations being cancelled is greatly reduced. We are able to develop new and improved techniques using equipment such as this, donated by the Friends, to increase our productivity.”
Willy Goldschmidt, Chairman of the Friends of St Cross, said “The Friends Trustees are always amazed by the amount of innovation that takes place at St Cross and are keen to do what we can to support this knowing what a difference it makes to the patient experience and the reputation of the hospital.”
Photo: By Navin Mistry – Operating Department Practitioners Deb Vollbracht, Rachel Barrett, Larissa Belgrove and Paul Johnson, Operating Department Practitioner with Willy Goldschmidt, Chairman of the Friends of St Cross.