A minimally invasive approach to hip replacement relieved pain that once made movement difficult for Patricia Scarangello.
TURNING
POINTE
HIP REPLACEMENT SURGERY PROMISES TO EXTEND A WOMAN’S DANCING CAREER.
A
t 62, Patricia Scarangello, a ballet dancer and teacher in Aberdeen, lives an active life. She teaches at the New Jersey School of Ballet and works in TV and film, recently playing a dance instructor and choreographing a scene in the HBO miniseries “The Undoing.” But a few years ago, she started STEPHEN KAYIAROS, MD having pain in Healthy Together
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her left hip that threatened her passion and livelihood. “It was mild at first,” Scarangello says. “I just figured I had hurt something and that it was going to go away.” But the twinges kept getting worse. Scarangello was familiar with pain: Years of dance can take a toll on the body. The orthopedic team at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital (RWJUH) Somerset had treated her for multiple injuries, including a procedure to repair the meniscus cartilage of her knee. So when her hip pain continued, she turned to the hospital again. The
assessment: “I had no cartilage left in my hip at all,” she says. Charles Gatt, MD, an orthopedic sports medicine specialist on staff at RWJUH Somerset, urged Scarangello to consider hip replacement surgery, but she wasn’t ready. She figured surgery could sideline a dancing career. “Being a ballet dancer, I was very resistant,” she says. Scarangello decided to give steroid injections a try instead. She already received them in her toes, which also had lost cartilage over the years. The shots reduced her hip pain and helped her
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