Innovative tech eases knee replacement at Essentia

By Louie St. George III

TheGreat Minnesota Get-Together set another attendance record in 2019, with more than 2,126,000 fairgoers descending on Falcon Heights in search of anything-on-astick goodness.

Among the masses — improbably — was Valerie Pavlatos. The 57-year-old Superior resident was less than two months removed from having her left knee replaced at Essentia Health-St. Mary’s Medical Center. Yet, there she was navigating the state fair madness for eight straight hours over Labor Day Weekend. Pavlatos, a certified professional coder at Essentia, attributes the rapid recovery to an innovative technology known as Mako TM robotic arm-assisted surgery.

In the past, Pavlatos would have paid a steep price for spending an entire day on her feet and taking thousands of steps.

“Any time I would have done something like that before, I would think, ‘OK, how many Aleve am I going to have to take today to work through the pain?’ ” Pavlatos said. “But it was fantastic.”

This wasn’t Pavlatos’ first foray into knee-replacement surgery. In 2013, she had the right one done. Then, she underwent a more conventional surgery, also at Essentia. And while the results were terrific, Pavlatos endured more pain, more time in the hospital and twice as much missed work when compared to the Mako procedure this past summer.

Pavlatos was laid up for six weeks following the 2013 operation. This time around, she was back on the job three weeks later. Pavlatos said the pain “wasn’t bad at all.”

“You had a little bit of post-surgical discomfort, but you’re prepared for that,” she said.

Part of the reason for the reduced pain is that, with Mako, there is less trauma to the soft tissue, much of which is spared thanks to a detailed surgery plan that yields more precise cuts. Less pain, of course, means less pain medication and more mobility. And, because this approach, which uses a 3D model of your bones that comes from a CT scan, leads to a more predictable surgery, outcomes are better.

Pavlatos can attest to that.

“Valerie has been outstanding,” said Dr. Anne Normand, Pavlatos’ orthopedic surgeon at Essentia. “She’s a good example of what happens when you get really good buy-in and cooperation from a patient. Her attitude and determination … she’s just done beautifully.”

A mother of two, Pavlatos had arthritis in both knees, hence the replacements. She knows she waited too long to have surgery on the right knee, and didn’t want to make the same mistake again.

“This time, I didn’t want to let it get to that point,” Pavlatos said. “It was terribly bad when I had the right knee replaced. I just didn’t want to reach that point.”

Cortisone shots had kept the pain tolerable in her left knee. That was only a stopgap solution. As Pavlatos prepared to visit her daughter last March in Washington, D.C., she received the injections preemptively. The nation’s capital is one of those modern-day big cities that encourage mass transit and foot traffic.

“Pedestrian-friendly” sounds great unless you’re hobbling around with the assistance of cortisone.

“They got me through fine, but a couple days after I got home, I needed it again,” Pavlatos said.

If Pavlatos were to schedule a similar trip for March 2020, she’d have no concerns.

“Oh, my God, I’d be fine,” she said.

When Pavlatos arrived for a recent interview, you’d have never guessed she was moving on a pair of surgically replaced knees. An avid walker who used to downhill ski and play tennis while growing up, Pavlatos always has been active. The Mako procedure ensured that was possible sooner than later.

That’s good news for Pavlatos’ puppy, a flat-coated retriever that Pavlatos affectionately refers to as “80 pounds worth of energy.” She and her husband, Dan, spend a lot of time walking the pup. But Pavlatos hadn’t been comfortable taking the leash, something she expected to change by the end of September.

“That’s my major goal, the final holdout, is walking the dog,” she said.

Pavlatos is increasingly confident in the strength of her left knee. She was looking forward to doing some hiking while on vacation to the Black Hills in October. D

Louie St. George III is a media relations specialist at Essentia Health. He wrote this for The Woman Today.