Limb preservation

Throughout our network, our specialists work together to provide your care at every stage of your limb care journey. Our specialists pioneered limb care at our hospital, Presbyterian/St. Luke's Medical Center. The program was the first to offer limb care from multiple medical specialties in a single location.

Multidisciplinary limb care teams

Our expert limb specialists come from a range of backgrounds including, orthopedic surgery, vascular surgery, oncology care, infectious disease management, plastic surgery, pediatric limb care, rehabilitative services and pain management who collaborate to manage complex extremity conditions. Our care programs offer benefits such as:

• Advanced treatments with proven successes based on clinical research
• Full-time referral coordinators to assist with referrals, appointments, transportation and lodging
• Limb preservation programs tailored for adults and children
• Patient navigators as central points of contact for patients with limb-threatening diagnoses

To reach one of our patient navigators, call and speak with a staff member at (800) 262-5462.

Patient navigators

Understanding and navigating complex care plans may feel overwhelming, but our patient navigators are here to help every step of the way. Our navigators are members of your care team and serve as your advocate and educator. They provide support as you manage your condition.

Our patient navigators help by:

• Serving as a reliable and trusted source with answers to various questions
• Facilitating communication between all members of the healthcare team
• Helping you understand the preplanning necessary before undergoing surgery, such as arranging for home care, pet care and preparing your home post-surgery
• Visiting you during your hospital stay
• Being available to communicate with you following surgery
• Providing a connection to the Limb Preservation Foundation

Our limb preservation teams' collective experience and specialized knowledge allow us to treat a wide range of limb conditions, diseases and injuries. As part of that treatment, we offer several advanced programs that oversee medical management and support you throughout the duration of your care.

Our advanced programs include:

Amputation program

Should amputation become the treatment for your persistent limb problem, we are with you through the entire treatment process. Our team guides you through preparation, your specific procedure, recovery, rehabilitation, prosthetic fitting and any wellness concerns. We cover options such as, support groups for those considering amputation, amputation types and your options for prosthetic devices.

• Osseointegration technology — This procedure inserts a metal fixation device into your thighbone that attaches to your new prosthesis. The result gives you better prosthesis control and improves your quality of life.
• Targeted muscle reinnervation (TMR) — The technique reconnects the nerves that led to the amputated limb to nearby muscle nerves. As a result, TMR reduces lingering limb pain and phantom limb pain, both common experiences after amputation.

Avascular necrosis program

With this program, our orthopedic and plastic surgeons treat osteonecrosis-affected limbs with a variety of surgical options including allograft transplants, joint replacement and stem cell grafting.

Bone-healing program

This program manages bone conditions beyond osteonecrosis that may lead to limb loss with treatments such as bone abnormality correction, fixation options and custom titanium cage implantation.

Extremity replantation program

With this program, our specialists use multidisciplinary surgical options — plastic surgery, orthopedics, vascular surgery — to reattach severed limbs.

Mangled extremity program

This program is for patients who are medically stable following significant trauma resulting in a complex extremity injury.

Pelvic stabilization program

Pelvic stabilization, also known as percutaneous pelvic stabilization, is an advanced surgical solution for those who have pelvic deterioration due to bone cancer treatments.

Sarcoma (bone and soft tissue tumors) program

This program, combining expertise in oncology, surgery and orthopedics to treat bone and soft tissue tumors that threaten limb loss.

Our pediatric limb salvage specialists handle the full spectrum of conditions that pose a risk for limb loss. We execute multidisciplinary care for your child's condition while keeping in mind their growing bodies.

One of the advanced services we provide is hip preservation surgery. We use this to treat young people who have hip dysplasia, without having to do a total joint replacement.

If you have questions concerning your child's limb care needs, speak with one of our staff members at (877) 752-2737.

Upon discharge from the hospital, you'll meet with your care team to discuss monitoring your health at home. Your team will review available resources with you, including the Limb Preservation Foundation, the Amputee Coalition and Friends of Man, to aid in your recovery and help you return to your daily routine.

This type of surgery is a minimally invasive method that uses a camera, tiny instruments and small incisions to treat FAI and other hip complications. Arthroscopy allows surgeons to repair damaged cartilage and restore function to systems that support bones and joints.

Additionally, arthroscopic surgery is the means by which we accomplish hip replacement surgery and repair for hip labral tears. This and other minimally invasive methods benefit you by resulting in less pain, less scarring and faster recovery.

If you have a damaged or diseased bone, a surgeon may take healthy bone from a different part of your body and insert it into the damaged site to heal the bone in question. A bone graft allows cells in the old bone to join with the cells in the new bone, restoring overall function.

We can use bone grafting on almost any bone in the body, making it a useful tool for limb preservation.

In some rare cases of osteonecrosis, fractures that have failed to join through other means, you may need a vascularized bone graft to increase blood flow.

If you are experiencing bone cancer in your extremities, you may have tumors that need surgical treatment in order to avoid amputation. After removing the tumors, we can reconstruct the limb and give you back its function as much as possible.

To begin this process, chemotherapy, radiation therapy or other drug therapy are typically used for a period of time to shrink the tumor and kill its cells. After the tumor has shrunk, it can be completely removed, along with any surrounding damaged or diseased tissues.