An Interview with Dr. John Everett
Listen to our podcast episode about Knee Surgery Anesthesia recovery from The Bee’s Knees Podcast below.
Anesthesiologist Dr. John Everett
This interview was complete three weeks after Dr. Everett’s knee replacement surgery. In the discussion Dr. Everett covers his two knee replacement surgeries, his work as an anesthesiologist, and various approaches to knee surgery anesthesia. Click on the Play button above to hear the interview.
About Dr. John Everett
I’m an anesthesiologist in Lansing, Michigan. I’ve been here for 35 years. My story revolves around the fact that I tore the meniscus in my left knee in 1995. I was told in 10 years I’d need a knee replacement. I put it off. I had what’s called a microfracture in 2010. A repair bought me nine more years. Finally, I decided it needed to be replaced.
I had some experience before my most recent surgery because I had an acute injury on my right knee and had a partial knee replacement in 2017 which went well. Unfortunately, I’m in an old group of people and my business partners needed their hips replaced, so I had to put my left knee off until August 23rd, 2019.
General vs. Regional Anesthesia
I’ve been in practice since 1983. When I left my residency, regional anesthesia was the way to go on total joints. But I went to work at a hospital where the surgeons preferred general anesthesia. Then about eight years ago they decided, well, there’s too much evidence that regional anesthesia, spinal, for example, to numb you from the waist down is better for recovery and decreasing clotting problems like pulmonary embolus and deep vein thrombosis. So we’ve gone back to doing almost all of our total joints with spinal anesthesia. And we’ve gone to a phase of what’s called multimodal anesthesia analgesia, which is using more than narcotics. So all of our total joint patients get Celebrex, which is a nonsteroidal Tylenol.
