The Atlantic reports on the Patrick Kane's recovery from hip resurfacing surgery in an interview with Edwin P. Su, MD, hip and knee surgeon at HSS. 

Resurfacing — an alternative to a full hip replacement that involves shaving damaged bone and cartilage from the femur, capping that bone with metal and popping it back into a lined socket — has high-profile test cases in tennis and pro wrestling.

“I think the thing that got me,” Kane said, “was the fact that Dr. Su believes that I won’t have to retire because of my hip now.”

The belief, held by the player, the team and its medical staff, is still that Kane can be that person, even at 35. It’s shared by Dr. Su, who has performed thousands of hip resurfacings over nearly two decades, including . Success stories are important to him; the procedure accounts for less than 1 percent of all yearly hip replacements in the United States, and he believes that number should be higher, especially, he says, now that lower-quality implants and less committed surgeons are no longer in the mix. 

Kane, in the six months since his surgery, “has reset the whole recovery timeline” — and not just for hockey players.  “(Kane) really is, like, kind of freakish,” Dr. Su told The Athletic. “He’s just blowing it out of the water. Things that we expected to be accomplished by three months, he did in six weeks. Things that we expected in four months, he did at two months. He’s basically accelerated the timeline by almost half.”

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