An OXFORDSHIRE pensioner has become the first person outside the US to undergo revolutionary wrist replacement surgery.
Jacqueline Bertulsons was given a new £10,000 wrist joint, which ended two years of pain.
Her joint had twisted and she could barely use her hand.
But, thanks to surgeon Nick Gillham, she now has 80 per cent use of the joint, which should improve further over the next few months.
Mrs Bertulsons, of Foscote Rise, Banbury, broke her wrist when she fell off a chair.
Doctors tried traditional methods, including a plaster cast and pins to repair the joint, but to no avail.
Usually that would have been all doctors could do and Mrs Bertulsons would have been left in pain and unable to use her wrist.
She said: “This was the third operation, because the others failed and this was the last resort.
“My wrist was very ugly, very painful and very weak. I could hardly do anything with my wrist.
“It’s not 100 per cent right, but Mr Gillham said with physiotherapy and exercise it will come. I have got great faith in him.”
Mr Gillham, of the Horton Hospital’s NHS Treatment Centre, has been working with American counterparts to develop the technique.
Equipment was flown in from the US to allow him to renew a part of the wrist, the lower radius, that could previously not be replaced.
Mr Gillham said: “We could not get the fracture to join.
“If traditional methods to repair fractures, such as plaster and pins do not work, nothing else could be done.
“She would have had to live with it.”
Although hip replacements have been carried out for about 50 years, wrist replacement surgery is in its infancy in this country.
Now, after a little over an hour in surgery Mrs Bertulsons can use her wrist again.
Mr Gillham said: “It was the first time it has been done outside the US. This is entirely NHS. It has never been done privately, but was only achievable because of the treatment centre.
“If it was part of the Horton, management would not have allowed this to go ahead.”
The treatment centre is run by private firm Ramsay Healthcare, which is commissioned by Oxfordshire PCT to carry out NHS work.
The wrist replacement surgery – a prosthetic joint alone costs about £2,000 – is now regularly available at the centre and Mr Gillham already has several patients lined up for similar operations. It can be used to help people who have arthritis or fractures.
The treatment centre was built in 2006 to provide NHS patients with surgery such as hip and knee replacements.
banbury@oxfordmail.co.uk
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