Surgery frees elderly man from rare knee problem

A 65-year-old man, suffering from a rare genetic disorder that turned his knees black and hard like coal, got back to normal after he underwent a total knee replacement surgery at a hospital here.
Shahabuddin was diagnosed with Alkaptonuria, a rare genetic disorder affecting 1 in 250,000 to 1 million people worldwide, a condition that primarily causes urine to turn black when exposed to air.
Another feature of Alkaptonuria is ochronosis, which is a build-up of dark pigment in connective tissues such as cartilage and skin, leading to blacken and harden joints, most often the knee joint, leading to pain and stiffness in the knee, like in the case of Shahabuddin, said a doctor.

"Past 10 years were like a pain. Simple tasks like climbing stairs and walking or the actual strenuous ones like travelling, everything had become difficult," he said.
"When the patient came to me he was in really bad condition. His joints were all stiff and he was in immense pain. We recommended him total knee arthroplasty," says Dr L Tomar, Senior Orthopaedic Surgeon at Max Super Speciality Hospital, Patparganj.
Shahabuddin was operated on February 23. As a part of the surgical procedure, parts of the knee joint were replaced with artificial parts, called prostheses.
After the successful surgery, he soon started with the physiotherapy sessions and within months, he is doing all his works normally.

In India, the knee and joint pains are taken as a natural ageing process and despite a huge elderly population, joint replacement surgeries are still not very common, Tomar said.