“You know by how a person says ‘Tuhronno’ who’s a Torontonian,” went the discussion in the back room of the Lighthouse food bank on a windy February afternoon.
Margo Mingay was hard at work breaking up boxes while talking with fellow volunteers Omar and Dallas.
They were shocked to learn that, just 10 weeks ago, Margo had hip replacement surgery, as she scurried along and proceeded to push a cart stacked high with crates of produce. Little did they know, it was her second hip replacement in eight months.
A year ago, Margo was experiencing pain in her arthritic hip joints. “My legs were very sore, I couldn’t walk very far,” she says. “I’d get out of the car, and my hip would lock. I couldn’t move, I’d just stand there for a few minutes and shake my leg or hips around. Bending over was difficult; overall, life was challenging.”
Margo tried different therapies, but the pain progressed. “The pain would radiate; my lower leg was really tight. I’d go to exercise, went to physiotherapy; nothing got better.”
X-rays showed osteoarthritis in her hip joints, which went from medium to severe over only a few years’ time.
“The actual hip joint itself wasn’t so bad; it was the inability to do a lot of things,” explains Margo. “Every day was something different. But I thought ‘Oh the wait list for surgery is so long’, so I thought ‘may as well get on it’.”
It was early 2023 and there were over 4,000 patients waiting for a hip or knee arthroplasty – total joint replacement surgery – in the Toronto region. 20 per cent of those patients were considered “long waiters” – some of whom had severe and painful osteoarthritis as they waited to see an orthopaedic specialist and get a surgery date.
A solution to long wait times
Around this time, a partnership between Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and Michael Garron Hospital – the Toronto Regional Arthroplasty Collaborative (TRAC) – was preparing to launch the start of weekend surgeries for hip and knee replacement to increase the number of patients treated. The goal? Help tackle long waits across Ontario.
When Margo had her first consultation with orthopaedic surgeon Dr. Markku Nousiainen at Sunnybrook’s Holland Orthopaedic & Arthritic Centre in March 2023, the centre was preparing to open its operating room on the weekends for the first time. In the months that followed, Sinai Health and Unity Health joined the collaboration.
Participating orthopaedic surgeons were scheduling patients into the weekend surgery dates. Margo was offered a Saturday surgery appointment and quickly accepted. “You’re one of my first Saturday patients,” Dr. Nousiainen told her.
“I was surprised I got in so quickly,” says Margo.
On the road to recovery, Margo was adjusting to her new hip joint. After seeing Dr. Nousiainen again in early November 2023 to assess her other hip, and decide upon surgery again, she made herself available any time for her other hip replacement. “I received a call back with the option of surgery on December 19,” she says. “Despite Christmas being six days out, I jumped at the opportunity.”
“As we celebrate the one-year mark for this initiative, our current wait is less than four weeks for a patient to see a specialist from the time that their referral comes in from their primary care provider.”
– Dr. Markku Nousiainen
For her part, Margo is intent on following through on doctor’s orders to keep active, as evidenced by her weekly shift at the food bank, as well as resuming her volunteer work driving cancer patients to and from their hospital appointments. She’s also doing regular walking, going to the gym and riding her stationary bike.
“I feel great,” she says. “Bending over can be a bit tough, but 10 weeks in, no major problems, I’m getting back in to it, getting stronger. Now it’s my other joint arthritis problems that bother me!”
As of March 31, 2024, TRAC had completed 1,120 additional arthroplasty surgeries. “These are surgeries that wouldn’t have otherwise been completed in that time period, and our patients are seeing the results with more accessible and earlier surgical dates,” says Dr. Nousiainen.
Would you like to be seen for your hip or knee arthritis in under four weeks?
Learn more about the referral process at ReduceMyHipandKneeWait.ca
Photo: Kevin Van Paassen/Sunnybrook
