If you're here, it's because you deserve MORE.

You like to camp. That's our favorite thing to do is just to run with people that we've known since we were like fifteen, sixteen years old. I started out as an x-ray tech and worked my way up, and I finally landed in MRIs when MRIs at Baptist Health were first started. Not all patients walk in, lay on a table, and lay down, get up and go. They either come in in a wheel chair or they come in on a stretcher where you have to pull and tug them off the stretcher onto the table. You start doing that year after year, that takes its wear and tear on your joints. So in my late 50s, it really started to pop and crack when I could not dress myself anymore.

And when I had broke the third coffee cup out of the micro wave trying to get it in and out that I said this is it. I can't do this anymore. And I finally reached out to Doctor Abeln because his name was the one that kept coming up that patients seemed to like and seemed to have the best results with.

I try and first listen, what are we trying to get back to? It helps me understand perhaps how aggressive to be in offering treatments. It doesn't always have to be surgical. If some of the gains are really mild, we can offer non surgical care.

If there's a bigger problem and the goals are higher, then yes, surgery might be the best option. So Leisa had suffered initially from some soft tissue damage to her shoulder and required work to address that from a minimally invasive standpoint.

The first surgery was rotator cuff. I think I just thought I was too young to have a shoulder replacement because I was still only in my 50s.

As our joints age, other problems can come into focus. I like to look at patients imaging with them. I'll show them their x-ray, I'll show them the MRI and explain well hey this is how it should look.

The reverse shoulder replacement was the easiest, best decision I ever made.

Reverse shoulder replacement has been frankly a game changer for shoulder replacement and really expanded our ability to help patients with shoulder pain. The reason it gets the name reversed is because we essentially put the implants in backwards. Our shoulder essentially has a ball on one side and a socket on the other during the surgery. Similar to a standard shoulder replacement, we remove a small piece of the patient's bone, but the implants are then put in so that after surgery, the ball is now where the socket was and vice versa. And so that better stabilizes the joint and essentially helps us replace the function of the rotator cuff.

Leisa's very motivated. Wants to get better tomorrow and those are the best patients to work with who have a defined goal. I like to work along with them to meet those goals and I hate that they're not meeting them when they come see me and trust us with our ability to them back to that.

Within weeks there were things that I could see, the motion that I could do with my arm that I hadn't been able to do before, and even my physical therapist said they couldn't believe the motion that I had back so quick, so easily.

The body is a machine that is meant to move. And so if we aren't, we see downsides to that. And so fortunately musculoskeletal care can help us kind of keep the machine running.

I am a hugger so not being able to hug that was was really important to me. So it meant the world to me when I could hug again. Not only am I able to hug, but I'm able to be, I feel like I'm able to be more independent. Because I've had good results, I would like to share that with somebody and tell them, Okay, I've been down this road. I've had good results.

And please go down this road. Have these good results. Choose Baptist Health Floyd Orthopedics. Thanks to Doctor Abeln, I'm off to Greece and Italy.

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♪ There's a lot of conditions that can lead to degeneration of the hip that requires hip replacement. And, you know, at the end of the day, all of these patients that require this surgery have enough pain to justify undergoing the procedure. We obviously first start with conservative treatment, and that's a front-line treatment for all of the conditions. And as the pain becomes worse, and you fail the non-operative management, then we start the discussion of hip replacement surgery.

I think that taking a personal touch with getting to know your patients is essential to being a surgeon. You know, I'm not just a surgeon. You know, I'm a physician, and I like to take care of the patient. So, you know, the first time I meet a patient, I want to know more about them.

I want to know what makes them tick. I want to know what they like to do. What kind of joint you're looking for. You know, what you're going to do with this surgery.

What your goals post-operatively are. So, really getting to know them on a personal level is really important to know what kind of surgery to do and to know what kind of expectations that patient has, you'll really be able to have a thorough conversation about it. I truly believe that Baptist Health Louisville provides the top-notch service in the state for knee and hip replacement, and I think we're leaps and bounds above other facilities. And we do provide, you know, more of these services than any other hospital, so that we're always kind of leading the way but at the same time making sure that patient care is number one.

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♪ Patients who benefit from same-day joint replacement surgery are usually younger, more active, healthier patients meaning not a lot of medical comorbidities. These patients are usually highly motivated, want to return home, and get back to life as soon as possible. Same-day surgery is a great option for those patients and it's really increased over the last few years. The chief benefits of going home earlier are you're getting yourself out of the hospital environment where just by the nature of being in a hospital, there's a little higher risk of infection because there are sicker patients that are around.

Other things are quality of life and comfort scores. What we found is that patients are happier at home. They're happier being at home as soon as possible, rather than being in a hospital, no matter how nice the hospital is. There's alarms ringing all night which disturbs the sleep cycle.

They're more active when they're at home because they walk around their own house instead of being confined to a hospital room, and their pain scores are a little lower for those reasons. Baptist Health Louisville is a great place to have your joint replacement. Baptist Health Louisville is one of the higher volume centers in the city. In our center here, we don't do just 50 or 100 joint replacements a year, there's 1000's of joint replacements that are done which is to the patient's advantage because it's a very well-oiled team that does the same thing every time.

They know what to look for, they know red flags that may cause complications, and all those things help increase patient satisfaction and the patient experience, and minimize the risks of bad things like complications happening. ♪ [music]

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♪ Patients who've been having ongoing knee arthritis and mostly those who have tried conservative therapies and are at the point where those just don't work for them anymore are patients who really do benefit from total knee joint replacement. At Baptist Louisville, we're an orthopedic center of excellence which means the surgeons and staff are experienced and well-trained, you know, from when somebody walks into the door to when they walk out, they are receiving care that is second to none. With anybody, I want to treat them like I'd want to be treated. I like to explain all the options that are available to my patients and just let them know that we're a team and whether we're doing conservative therapy or we're talking surgery, I'm here to support them in any way I can.

And when it comes time to have a surgery, I really have the easy job in all this. The patient has the more difficult job in doing the rehab and putting the time in to get the results that we're wanting to get. With people undergoing total joint replacement, the goal is to get you back doing normal daily activities and things you enjoy doing. We really want to restore you into living your life.

And if we can't do that with conservative therapies, then that's when I tell all my patients, "You need to have that honest conversation with yourself and consider having a total knee replacement with the end goal being getting back to living your life." ♪ [music]

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Robotic knee surgery has basically evolved over time as we have advanced technology in the operating room. The preoperative planning is quite important for the robot or really any surgery. So when I see a patient, I try to collect as much data as I can from them in the actual clinic visit. So I actually get x rays that look at what your knees look like from your hip all the way down to your toes to understand what your overall alignment is.

And then I also get a CT scan that tells the robot what the shape of your bone is. So the robot is able to know what your knee looks like based on the CT that we feed it beforehand. And by doing so, I can decide what is the correct position of our implants in order to reduce the amount of stress on both sides of the knee. By using robots, we can use smaller incisions, have less OR time, and we're more accurate with what we're executing in the operating room, which gives us more confidence in what we're putting in patients and allowing them to get up and get moving.

The goal is to get them back to doing the things they want to do and then doing that as quickly and safely as possible.

One of the benefits about Baptist Floyd is that we are investing in the future of hip and knee replacement. We have brought in all these new technologies into this one facility and they have also expanded their operating rooms so that our capacity higher than it ever has been. Baptist is placing a large emphasis on a positive patient experience with good outcomes and primary joint replacement so that patients can go home and get back on their feet.

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♪ - [Woman]

My condition was that I couldn't use either arm. My left arm was worse than my right arm, and so I went to see Dr. Abeln, and he did the x-rays and said the only thing left to do, because I had tried everything else, was to have the total replacement surgery.

- [Dr. Abeln]

[inaudible]

had been a patient of mine for a long time and initially was one of those patients who kind of thought it wasn't that bad and we managed with some other ways. And then eventually she just had had enough. Shoulder replacement surgery is probably in its third or fourth decade. Newer technologies like reverse total shoulder arthroplasty are somewhat newer.

I think a lot of the advancements are from perioperative pain control, helping patients be more comfortable, minimize the blood lost during surgery. The implants have gone through some refinements so that offers a lot of patients who would not have been candidates before to be able to have a successful surgery.

- I had no pain after the surgery, had the home health, and went to physical therapy for about 3 or 4 weeks. And my range of motion is back almost to normal. I can now play with my grandson. He's the joy of my life.

I can lift him and play outside with him. I just feel really blessed and I'm just very grateful to Dr. Abeln for what he's been able to do for me. ♪ [music]

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