Surgical operations will always be a necessary part of any modern and effective health service. These are not necessarily or per se ‘dangerous procedures’, in today’s world, and many are necessary and life-saving procedures. However, the demand for surgery, and the amount of surgery actually undertaken, would not be as great if it was allied to a medical therapy that could deal more safely and effectively with the illness and disease that precedes the need for it.
Organ Replacement
The human body comes with a fully-equipped, fully-operational and integrated set of organs that have been honed to support life, and to maintain good health. When patients develop some form of organ disease conventional medicine will treat this initially by some form of pharmaceutical medication.
Often, organ failure or disease is a direct result of conventional medical drugs and vaccines that are taken for other conditions and ailments. Even common pharmaceutical drugs, sold without a doctor’s prescription, such as painkillers, can damage our organs, and do so more frequently than we are told!
When conventional drug treatment does not work, if the organ deteriorates, or when its function is significantly reduced, it can become life threatening situation for the patient.
When this happens, conventional surgery seeks to replace the disease organ with another organ taken from a donor. The number organ replacement operations has increased rapidly over the last 50 years, as the techniques and procedures have developed to make them viable.
The surgeons who do these operations are brilliant technicians, but they are used only after conventional medical drug treatment has failed, or has exacerbated the situation..
There is, thereafter, another problem. In order to stop the body from rejecting the new organ, the patient has to take drugs, and take them for the remainder of their lives. These drugs can have serious disease-inducing effects.
Limb Replacement
Limb replacement surgery has become commonplace, often described now as ’routine’ surgery. Limb replacement is required for people who have usually suffered some form of arthritic pain for a considerable amount of time. Conventional medicine has no effective treatment for arthritis. It can use painkillers, which can temporarily reduce the pain, but the condition remains. But painkillers, especially when used over a long period of time, come with long-term health effects. They cause harm, and they create new diseases. But most of all, they do not deal with the arthritis, which gets progressively worse, require more powerful painkillers, which cause great harm, and are more likely to cause serious new diseases.
One feature of painkillers is that they can actually worsen the arthritic condition that is causing the pain, so that ultimately, the pain, and the deterioration of the joint, or joints, is actually made worse by the ‘treatment’ conventional medicine offers!
Eventually, the pain levels become unbearable, and surgery becomes the last resort. The natural limb is removed, and an artificial one replaces it. There are four main problems or issues arising from limb replacement procedure.
- The fitting of this new limb by the surgeon may not be completely successful, and ‘complications’ can arise from the surgery itself. This can include immediate problems, such as blood loss, infection, early hemorrhage, wound breakdown, fractures, and anaesthetic problems. Other problems might also emerge to the cardiovascular, respiratory, renal, and other systems. Deep venous thrombosis (DVT) can also be a major danger.
- Drugs may then be used, for example, Heparin is often given to avoid DVT , and Warfarin for several weeks following the operation. Older people are particularly at risk of complications, and the drugs used to reduce these, and of course limb replacement is often done for older people!
- The new limb may not function properly. The device can fail, or not perform in the way it was designed. It is found, for example, to be loose. This can often lead to painful complications for the patient, especially if the patient is obese, or uses the new limb beyond its capabilities. Sometimes, the device fails because of faulty design or manufacture. Sometimes devices have been found to be inadequately tested. Patients and surgeons will not be aware of this until after they have already been fitted, and the surgery has to be repeated, and a new device fitted.
- Drugs have to be taken following surgery, often to deal with issues of infection following the operation. When a micro-organism enters the body, the body can deal with it through it own blood supply. Or antibiotics can be used to circulate to the infected area through the blood supply. But the replacement limb does not have its own blood supply, so the micro-organisms can attach to the device, and infect surrounding tissue.
The dangers of antibiotic drugs, and any other conventional medical drugs used following limb replacement, also has to be considered when considering the safety, and long-term viability of the operation.
In addition, as the cause of the arthritis has never been addressed, many patients find that a single limb replacement leads to arthritis developing in other limbs, which previously may have been unaffected. After a time, this newly affected limb can become so painful that it, too, has to be replaced. What this demonstrates is that limb replacements do not deal with the underlying cause of the patient’s problem. They are brilliant technical achievements, but not achievements that ultimately improve health in the longer term.
So patients who need them will benefit from them by the reduction of pain, and often greater mobility. They will be pain-free, often for the first time for many years. But safe and effective treatment, years earlier, would have been a better solution.
