LAHORE, Feb 17: Knee-replacement treatment has been made possible without blood transfusion thanks to extensive research in London, claims a Pakistani orthopaedic surgeon who headed the project.

“A team of orthopaedic specialists at the Newham University Hospital, London has developed the advanced method of knee replacement without the loss of blood.

“I am looking forward to introducing this method of treatment in Pakistan in a year or so after establishing a set-up here,” Dr Muhammad Zahid Saeed, a trauma and orthopaedic surgeon at the hospital in London, told Dawn. Dr Saeed is currently on a visit to his home district Rahim Yar Khan and he paid a visit to Lahore the other day.

Dr Saeed said nowhere in the world was this method of treatment in vogue before he and his team pioneered it a couple of months ago. “Under the new method, two-centimeter incision is required as against the current practice of 15cm. Besides zero blood transfusion, no stitches are needed under the newly-developed method and a patient gets recovered within two weeks,” he said, adding that the total expenditure of complete knee-replacement treatment was about 12,000 pounds in the UK.

Dr Saeed said his team had adopted a technique of injecting the knee with a special drug that reduced the bleeding after operation. The surgery was performed with the help of computer navigation system. “The research began to be recognised at the international level soon after it was presented before the European Federation of Orthopaedics and Traumatology (EFORT’s) annual meeting in Lisbon, Portugal last year.

“Research helps find new treatments to control diseases and abolish useless treatments. It gives new ideas about the management of diseases and also helps doctors improve their professionalism,” according to Dr Saeed who was awarded by EFORT for his contribution to the research.

Answering a question, he said the most common indication of total knee-replacement was osteoarthritis of knee. The other causes included rheumatoid arthritis, Paget’s disease and severely damaged knee after an accident. About the success rate in total knee replacement under the new method, Dr Saeed said “it is 95 per cent”.

Commenting on the research facilities in Pakistan, Dr Saeed, who had done his MBBS from the Allama Iqbal Medical College and MRCS from the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburg, UK, said the government should provide maximum financial assistance to the doctors engaged in research so that they could carry out their work with full dedication and present the same at the international forums.

To another question, he said: “I will return home after completing my training and introduce navigation system and robotic surgery here,” he said.