Aside from his clinical practice, Dr. Alex DeHaan has been putting forth time and effort to improve the field of orthopedic surgery in attempts to make surgery better and safer for patients throughout the country. He has been a principal investigator in three research projects over the past year, all being presented at this year’s national Orthopedic meeting taking place in San Diego, California. During two of these presentations Dr. DeHaan will address an audience of his peers, while the third will be a visual presentation displayed throughout the meeting.
The two audience presentations are titled “Perioperative Antibiotic Prophylaxis with Both Vancomycin and Cefazolin Prior to Primary Hip and Knee Arthroplasty: A Safety and Efficacy Analysis” and “Patient’s Self-Reported, Measured, And Surgeon Estimate Of Body Mass Index Prior To Primary Total Hip And Knee Arthroplasty: Is There A Difference?” The first study is looking at the safety, effectiveness, and utility of giving patients two antibiotics prior to their hip or knee replacement in attempts to decrease and lower their risk of infection. The second study is evaluating the best method to measure a patient’s body mass index prior to surgery, with the goal of optimizing clinic and surgeon efficiency with reproducible results, in order to ensure patient safety at the time of surgery.
The visualpresentation is titled “Proximalization Of The Tibial Tubercle Osteotomy: A Solution For Patella Infera During Revision Total Knee Arthroplasty.” This projects looks at the outcomes of a new and novel surgical exposure technique when performing a revision knee replacement. It involves opening up the tibia (called a tibial tubercle osteotomy) to perform the surgery, but when fixing the piece of bone at the end, moving it to a slightly different position to help improve knee mechanics.
These presentations will take place during the American Academy of Orthoapedic Surgeons Annual Meeting from March 14th-18th 2017. All of these research projects are being submitted to a research journal for publication this year.
We will post updates after the AAOS meeting, so stay tuned!