At 56, She’s Back at Surfing, Hiking and Other Ventures After Double Hip Replacement at Baptist Health Orthopedic Care

Surgical and technological advances in hip replacement surgery have come a long way. Just ask Laurie Barkhorn, 56, who is likely more active than people half her age – surfing, hiking, cycling and a regular at the gym.

She moved from Philadelphia to Vero Beach, Florida with her husband about five years ago after retirement to live near his family. Certainly, Florida was a better fit for such an active couple. “We’re both surfers,” she says. “I'm an avid cyclist and I love hiking. Pretty much anything outdoors other than scary mountain climbing, I love to do. It's a big part of my life.”

But her active lifestyle would take an abrupt break after undergoing two total hip replacements with Charles M. Lawrie, M.D., a board-certified, fellowship-trained orthopedic surgeon at Baptist Health Orthopedic Care.

(Watch Now: Hear from hip replacement patient Laurie Barkhorn and Charles M. Lawrie, M.D., a board-certified, fellowship-trained orthopedic surgeon at Baptist Health Orthopedic Care. Video by Michael Justiz.)

“I was quite frightened about that,” she recalls. “Being 56 years old, it was nothing that I had expected I would have to do at this age. And I associated it with people who were older -- and they're big joints in your body. They're critical joints for anything from walking to the surfing that I do.”

Dr. Lawrie utilized the latest advances in Ms. Barkhorn’s case. Over the past several years, the direct “anterior approach” has become popular because it requires less disruption of the underlying tissue and muscle. In this method, the surgeon makes the incision on the front of the hip. Less cutting of the muscle is necessary, and recovery is faster.

Charles M. Lawrie, M.D., a board-certified, fellowship-trained orthopedic surgeon with Baptist Health Orthopedic Care.

 

“Laurie was a patient of mine who came to me really at a pretty young age with two pretty bad hips that were limiting her activity,” said Dr. Lawrie. She's a very active individual. And she felt like her hips were painful to the point that she was limited in her ability to do those things. She’d exhausted non-surgical treatment and had come to me really interested in anterior approach to hip replacement.

The anterior approach to hip replacement is often performed with the use of a special operative and visual instruments. In the case of Ms. Barkhorn, Dr. Lawrie used the VELYS Hip Navigation, which is a non-invasive system that provides surgeons with real-time data and visuals designed increase, reduced time in the operating room and improve patient outcomes.

“There's been a variety of advances over the years in hip replacement surgery, both in the implants that we use and the actual surgical technique we use to do the surgery,” explains Dr. Lawrie. “The anterior approach has really made big waves in our field for its promise of less pain after surgery and quicker recovery.”

The VELYS Hip Navigation system is one of the “enabling technologies” that has helped orthopedic surgeons operate with more precision. “One of those technologies that we used for Laurie’s surgery is computer-based navigation. That allows us to use the fluoroscopic X-rays that we take and have a computer actually analyze them for us so we can improve our precision.”

Fluoroscopy is a type of medical imaging that shows a continuous X-ray image on a monitor -- like an ”X-ray movie.”

Laurie Barkhorn has returned to her active life after the hip replacement surgeries with Dr. Lawrie.

“Dr. Lawrie’s work and surgery has completely given me my life back,” she said. “The hip replacements -- and the dialogue and the solution -- that I found with Dr. Lawrie was really life-changing.”