A leading North East surgeon wants to encourage young arthritis patients that they may not need a knee replacement.
Matt Dawson, who works at Newcastle 's Nuffield Hospital, is an international expert in osteotomy - a kind of surgery which allows some patients with arthritis to avoid a knee replacement and instead have their legs and knees "realigned" - and wants to make sure as many potential patients as possible know about the procedure.
Mr Dawson - a consultant surgeon who works at the Nuffield in Jesmond and in the NHS in Cumbria - said the surgery involves old-fashioned techniques which have gone out of fashion in recent decades, along with state-of-the-art implant technology. Osteotomy is a procedure where "the bone just above or beneath the joint" is cut and the pieces are "created into new positions".
