Results obtained in the non-surgical treatment of tuberculosis of the joints / H. Winnett Orr.

  • H. Winnett Orr
Date:
1913
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Results obtained in the non-surgical treatment of tuberculosis of the joints / H. Winnett Orr. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    RESULTS OBTAINED IN THE NON-SURGICAL TREATMENT OF TUBERCULOSIS OF THE JOINTS * H. WINNETT ORR, M.D. LINCOLN, NEB. The reasons for and against the surgical treatment of joint tuberculosis have heen ably presented and discussed by many good writers on the subject. Perhaps the whole argument on the operative treatment of joint tubercu- losis is as well presented in the recent work of Gold- thwait, Painter and Osgood,1 as anywhere in recent literature. As I interpret their attitude on this question, it is that we are and should be drifting away from the tendency to operate in these cases in adults as well as in children, but that in selected cases operation may still he considered to be admissible for a variety of reasons, five of which are set forth as being worthy of considera- tion in connection with radical surgical treatment. Of the five all are held to be invalid under most circum- stances. With the views set forth by Goldthwait, Painter and Osgood in this work it is my pleasure to agree most heartily. Their conclusions are at the same time scien- tific and sensible. It is my purpose, however, in this paper to carry their teachings somewhat further and to strengthen their conclusions if possible, by a series of observations, somewhat different from theirs, on my own patients. It lias been some years since I began to be impressed with the fact that patients with joint tuberculosis com- ing under our observation who had previously been oper- ated on were, as a general thing, much more seriously disabled and that the active stage of their disease was much more prolonged than even the advanced cases in which the patients had not previously resorted to surgery. * Read in the Section on Orthopedic Surgery of the American Medical Association, at the Sixty-Fourth Annual Session, held at Minneapolis. June. 1913. !• Goldthwait. J. E.; Painter, C. F., and Osgood, It. B.: Diseases of the Bones and Joints, Boston, 1909.