Healthy Bytes

What you kneed

read time: 192 words, about a minute

I’ve noticed a new commercial pop up a few weeks ago about some brand of women’s replacement knees. The commercial emphasizes these knees are made for women and implies other knees are made for men and don’t work as well.

The first thought I had was…
Are there so many knee replacement that paying to produce and air this commercial is cost effective. Is this really going to drive a swarm of women to their docs requesting the “fem knee”?

CNN House Call ran a piece on the increase in knee replacements over the weekend…

1 pound of weight = 4 pounds of pressure on the knee
There are 400,000 knee replacements a year – projected to 8 fold increase to 3.5 million by 2030
A replacement knee lasts 15-20 years and cost $31,000
The average age for a knee replacement is decreasing – which means, the replacement may need to “replaced” before the person dies

The reason for the increase in the number of replacements and the decrease in average age… excess weight according to the orthopedic surgeon.

Excess weight and obesity aren’t self contained problems. They trigger one health issue after another.

This entry was posted on Tue, 20.Feb.2007 at 5:51 pm and is filed under Obesity, Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.