Did Tom Watsons New Body Part Help His Golf Handicap?
By Robert Latkany, MD July 21, 2009 If you were doing what most golf-enthusiast couch potatoes were doing this past weekend, you were perched on the edge of your seat hoping to witness 59 year old Tom Watson win the British Open. If Watson had made an 8 foot putt, he would have won. Only one year away from a total hip replacement by Dr Joel Matta at Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California, Tom Watson will not walk home with the Claret Jug, but he may have generated a surge of interest in total hip replacements for those golfers looking to blame something for their worsening golf handicaps. There are a few interesting points you need to know before you consider heading to the operating room. Mahomed et al evaluated nearly 62,000 patients who underwent elective total hip replacement surgery and found a 1% mortality rate, 4.6% hospital readmission rate, 3.1% hip dislocation, 0.9% pulmonary embolus within the first 90 days following surgery. In case you missed that, I’ll rep
