13/09/07-15/09/07

Vancouver

Vancouver is a beautiful city, rather similar in feel to Sydney. At least it was for our visit, with clear skies & sun, although the locals all say it rains a lot.

At Vancouver General Hospital we met Don Garbuz at 6.30am to present at their arthroplasty meeting prior to going to theatre (OR as they insist on calling it, the list being a “slate”).

After 2 weeks of primaries through small holes it was great to see an x-ray of a grossly loose, jumbo cementless cup above a well-fixed long cementless stem on the viewer.

We made polite enquiries about discontinuity & unsurprisingly the pelvis was in 2 separate & mobile parts. Don had the luxury of one of his 5 colleagues who do nothing but trauma come in & put a posterior column recon plate on for him before getting on with the revision. First glimpse of the famous trabecular metal cup after a medial mesh & some impacted morsellized allograft medially. It was a whopper at 78mm diameter & coupled with a 36mm face-changing liner, produced a stable construct and reduction. Really good to see a proper, difficult revision & the result looked excellent.

Because of the discontinuity, the revision had taken longer than expected. It being Friday & a public health system, murmurs started about not being able to do the last case. Sure enough, after a primary (M/L taper, x-linked poly), the last case was cancelled. We should offer to lend them KT to persuade their lists to continue a little longer!

Off to LA on Sunday but today free to explore Vancouver. Fortunately the time difference means we are up bright & early to make the most of the day.