Good morning, JK, Dame Wocane, and all -

First on the X10 - This item is ONLY covered by Blue Cross/Blue Shield in Michigan (the original surgeon/inventor
has strong links to Unniversity of Michigan Dr. Haller - also his CEO and several of his corp people are grads).
U of M has a lot of influence in that state. When you go to their website - you see the limits on the areas you can
get access to this. If you anywhere other than the mid-west (or Florida) you're making a 3-4 week pilgramage
that will NOT be covered by your insurance.

Dame Wocane - My first TKR was severely complicated by an obviously oversized upper (femoral) portion of the prosthetic.'
They don't say much about this (or anything), but these are "shelf components" stocked in these surgical centers. Yes, they
take xrays and MRI's but on the day of surgery I am told they "eyeball" the joint cavity when it is opened up and select what
they think will fit. This process is literally called (and I'm not making this up) "stuffing the joint cavity" (like a Christmas turkey
maybe). The prosthetic joint consists of three pieces - an upper, lower, and middle insert (usually polyethelyne). These are
"sized" like shoes. What isn't commonly known is that - it's common for someone to receive a size #6 upper portion and then
a 6-1/2 or #7 lower portion based on their individual physiology (and what should ideally fit best). When you understand that
most of these surgical centers are in a literal race to see how many of these they can do in a day... it's easy to see how these
mistakes (which are usually never admitted by theoriginal surgeon - deemed "close enough") happen frequently. In my own case,
foe the partial revison I got two opinions from respected local surgeons who both commented that the upper portion was clearly
oversized. The one who said this "the loudest" is the one I chose. Writing up the recommendation to my insurance for the necessity
of the procedure, he significantly "soft-pedaled" this as "a possible explanation and something that might work to solve the problem"
although this was drastically stated to me as "the knee can NEVER recover properly if you don't do this". Sometime after the revison
surgery I learned that a sizeable amount of his business came from doing surgical TKR revisions from this surgeon mainly as well
as other local surgeons (all of course "highly respected" but mostly by each other). Typically... you can expect surgeons to never admit
that there ever was a problem with the surgery they themselves performed - and they assume no responsibility (financial or otherwise).
These people are being very well paid as "guardians" of our best health interests. At some point we must ask the question:
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

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