Share review of Professor Damian Griffin OBE TD VR BM BCh MA MPhil FRCS(Tr&Orth)

Professor Damian Griffin OBE TD VR BM BCh MA MPhil FRCS(Tr&Orth) 2023-08-03 Person 5 5 0

I live in Kenya and after being diagonosed with osteoarthritis in my hip in 2019 received a recommendation for Prof. Griffin from a previous patient. I am middle-aged and athletic and was told Prof Griffin's quality of treatment would enable me to get back to a fully athletic lifestyle. Covid travel restrictions delayed my surgeory but during this time I had several consultations and scans and eventually opted for hip resurfacing as my condition had progressed to the point where arthroscopic treatment would likely not be fully effective. I had the surgery in London is May 2023 and spent 2 months in the UK before traveling back to Kenya, to minimize the post-op clotting risk. Throughout the process I had great faith in Prof. Griffin. During pre-op consultations he provided clear explanations as to the details of the diagnosis, his recommendations and the reasons for the recommendations, so that I was completely confident that the selected intervention was the right one. He projects a calm and confident manner and is focused on every little detail of providing quality care from the type of stitching and dressing used to any advantage he can obtain from new equipment or facilities available at the hospital he uses (and he is clearly selective of the hospitals he uses). He put my wife (who was accompanying me and has no other connections with the UK) completely at ease, explaining the surgey and telling her not to worry if the operation seemed to be going longer than expected as it would just mean he was taking his time. He also has a team that he has worked with for a couple of decades and meeting them immediate pre-op it was clear they had a finely tuned operation. I was therefore relatively relaxed even in the anaesthesia room. The post-op recovery was smooth and painless and went exactly as it had been explained to me by Prof. Griffin: 2 weeks of tiredness and wooziness which ended with the last dose of oxycontin, followed by another 4 of daily icing and physio exercises whilst using crutches. During the latter 4 weeks I was able to continue full time studies. My travel back to Kenya was easy and uneventful. At the 3 month point I am able to walk normally and the muscles around the hip are getting back to normal strength and range of motion and are able to tolerate aggressive physiotherapy strengthening exercises. I worked with a physiotherapist, James Neal, that also has a long working relationship with Prof Griffin and knew how to match the physio to his surgical approach. Overall, the disruption to my life of a major operation overseas (I am British but emigrated decades ago) was minimized by my confidence in Prof Griffin, clear and accurate expectations of the operation and post-op recovery and the quality of his work. There was no significant post-op pain, recovery went smoothly and I was able to plan to utilize the recovery period with appropriate levels of work activity.