Email reply from O'Hara

ther doctors and physiotherapist have led me to believe. And there is a way to correct it should i have too after giving the left hip and femur time to fully heal. He recommends leaving it for two years in total to give everything time to settle down. Copied and pasted the email so you can all read it.

F.A.O. Ms Debbie Wyatt

Dear Ms Wyatt

Many thanks for your kind and detailed email of 5 August 2010.

When we originally saw you with your troublesome left and right hips your left leg was approximately one inch short. With your left leg being one inch short, the muscles on the outside of your right leg were having to work especially hard in order to stabilise your pelvis.

Following your operation we have fairly successfully given you something very close to equal leg length on both sides but inevitably, until you are fully rehabilitated following the operation on your left hip you can’t necessarily expect your right hip to feel entirely normal.

Your most recent x-ray indicates that your left leg remains about 7 or 8 millimetres short – this isn’t very much and something which, if you are very concerned about, you could treat with the sort of gel insert heel raise that you will find in Boots.

Experience following the type of operation that you have had performed indicates that it can take well over a year and in some patients’ cases 2 years, to rehabilitate fully and get full value from the operation. You will really only feel this once we have removed the metalwork.

One other thing that I have noticed is that on your CT scan you have an abnormal twist between the lower and upper parts of your right femur (thigh bone), whereas the socket is pretty normal. If the symptoms in your right hip don’t settle down maybe we ought to think about doing an operation to cut the right femur and twist it in to a more correct alignment.

I understand greatly that you are most concerned about having a second venous thrombosis and I do hope that everything goes well for you when we remove the metalwork. You won’t do yourself any harm by taking half an Aspirin a day and this will certainly reduce the risk of you having a further venous thrombosis.

I do hope that this answers all your queries.

Yours sincerely

Mr J N O'Hara
Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon