At age 60, Gene Wood was standing in a crowded airport in Paris when he realized that he had to find an effective treatment for the osteoarthritis in his right hip. Gene, an international banker, was catching a flight to Madrid for an important business meeting when he discovered that the airport people mover was out of order. The pains in his right leg made the half-mile walk to the airplane seem like a nearly insurmountable obstacle. With a friend's help, he made his flight, but spent the rest of the trip battling the discomfort caused by his osteoarthritis.

Throughout his life, Gene had been an avid golfer and had served on the boards of several local organizations, in addition to managing a successful career as a bank CEO. During the three-to-four years preceding the airport incident, he had experienced a gradual decline in his ability to stand or walk without pain, impeding his professional life and preventing him from enjoying his leisure time with his wife and son.

Gene had already tried non-surgical treatments and had been told by one surgeon that he was a poor candidate for hip replacement surgery due to his 6'4" height and large frame. Gene was determined not to take "no" for an answer. When he returned home, he contacted Thomas K. Donaldson, MD, an orthopaedic surgeon.

Not only did Dr. Donaldson perform the surgery, he also did a minimally-invasive procedure using only a 6-inch incision, instead of the 10- to 12-inch incision common until just a few years ago. Dr. Donaldson also designed a complete rehabilitation program for Gene, enabling him to recuperate fully in about four weeks.

"Without the surgery I wouldn't be walking now," Gene says. "I would be in a wheelchair or at best walking with a cane or walker." Instead of being forced into early retirement, Gene was able to realize a life-long dream: opening his own bank near his home in southern California.

Joint replacement surgery has made tremendous strides since 1968, when hip replacement surgeries were first performed. Joint replacement restores the individual's mobility and ability to lead a productive life. With more than 600,000 joint replacement surgeries performed in the United States each year, this represents an enormous savings in health and long-term care costs.

As a patient and professional financier, Gene would like to see Congress invest in more musculoskeletal research funding to allow doctors to continue making the kind of advances that benefited him.

The titanium implant used in Gene's surgery represents the state-of-the-art in durability and lasting fixation, but researchers are dedicated to developing even better materials and operative procedures. Other research studies are homing in on the genetic, biological and mechanical factors that influence the progression of osteoarthritis. Doctors hope that understanding the causes of the disease will lead to the development of new therapies and better methods of early detection. In the long run, they hope to be able to prevent osteoarthritis altogether, or to cure it in its early stages, before surgery becomes necessary.