Mindy Loach, right, works with Dr. Timothy Ballard, left, as he performs a double knee replacement Tuesday, January 17, 2016 at CHI Memorial Hospital.Orthopedic surgeon Dr. Tim Ballard doesn’t waste time.
It has been only a few minutes since he entered the operating room on the ground floor at CHI Memorial, his elderly female patient already sedated and unconscious on the operating table, with only a knee exposed.
With no hesitation, he slices straight down with his scalpel across his patient’s knee, top-to-bottom, making a cut that appears to be about 5 to 7 inches long.
He peels back the skin on either side and makes several other incisions, snipping through the tissue that holds the kneecap in place, allowing him to slide it to the side and exposing the two big leg bones, the femur and tibia, that come together at the knee.
He picks up his saw, a $6,000 tool with an oscillating blade, and aligns it with metal guides attached to the knee. With a deft move he slices off the rounded end of the femur, the thigh bone in the upper leg. A second and third cut, at 90 degrees to the first, squares off the nub of bone. He adds two more cuts to shape the bone and then slices a notch in the middle.