Winter 2020 Faulkner Lifestyle

physican spotlight
Conway surgeon gets to walk
in his patients‘ shoes, thrilled
by high-tech orthopedics
After 30 years of replacing hips
and knees, Dr. Tod Ghormley
experienced orthopedic surgery
from the other side of the table.
By the time he gave in and decided to have
a hip replacement earlier this year, he could
barely tie his shoes, and anti-inflammatory
medicine was part of his daily routine.
“Running too many marathons finally
caught up to me,” he said.
Ghormley was waiting on technology.
Having performed a new minimally
invasive direct superior approach for
hip replacement in conjunction with the
Mako robotic arm assisted hip replacements
for five months, he was convinced
that it was what he wanted for his own
surgery. “I wanted someone to do mine,
and no one else in Arkansas was using
both of those procedures like I did at
that time,” he said. Ghormley found a
colleague in Shreveport to perform the
procedures to replace his hip.
Ghormley was back to work in a week
and taking the stairs the day after surgery.
His wife, Mimi, had traditional hip
replacement surgery in Little Rock six
28 faulkner lifestyle | winter 2020