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Americans are wearing out their joints and requiring total hip replacement surgery at increasingly younger ages — some as early as 40.

Total hip replacement, a surgical procedure in which the head of the femur and its socket are replaced, is one of the most common surgeries performed in the United States. Over 340,000 people get a “new hip” each year to treat chronic pain and mobility issues caused by age-related wear and tear, arthritis, fractures, and other conditions.

Traditionally, patients face a lengthy and sometimes difficult recovery — an average of four days in the hospital, with follow-up care in a rehabilitation center

New York pediatrician Julie Luttinger, 55, dreaded a second hip replacement — her first was twelve years prior and she had to miss six weeks of work.

“I live in the city. I walk to work every day and I walk my son to school. I couldn’t do that anymore,” Julie said. “To make matters worse, I felt guilty about abandoning my colleagues again.”

Fortunately, a new nontraditional approach pioneered by Dr. Roy Davidovitch, orthopedic surgeon at NYU Langone Health, is promising patients a quicker short-term recovery time. Many patients even leave the same day.

There’s excitement in the medical community over a breakthrough treatment now being offered in Northeast Wisconsin in an effort to “kill the pill” and prevent drug addiction.

“I think in the next decade, we’re going to be able to get people through surgeries that are traditionally very painful without having to take any narcotic medications, which will prevent addictions,” says Dr. Robert Limoni, an orthopedic surgeon with BayCare Clinic.

Doctors at BayCare Clinic in Green Bay are trying a new approach to treating knee surgery pain that avoids prescribing opioids.

A few weeks ago, Target 2 Investigates got an inside look as undercover drug agents packed up and disposed of more than 60,000 pounds of unused medications in Wisconsin as part of a semi-annual drug take back collection.

We found an astounding 7.5 million prescriptions were written for controlled substances in Wisconsin, just through October first of this year. Nearly half of those were for opioids.

But a new procedure done pre-surgery is helping doctors eliminate having to give patients opioids post-surgery for what they classify as one of the most painful kinds of surgeries they perform.

Former President George W. Bush is back at home in Dallas, following partial knee replacement surgery Saturday in Chicago.

Bush spokesman Freddy Ford told CNN that the former president “had a successful partial knee replacement Saturday and came back to Dallas Monday.”
Ford added that it was not a new injury and that Bush was “up walking around and even went up and down a flight of stairs just a couple hours after the procedure.”

Bush, 67, remains active and regularly rides his bike. Earlier this month he led a physically demanding bike ride at his ranch near Crawford, Texas, to honor military members wounded in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Last August, the former president had a stent placed in his heart after a blockage was discovered in an artery.