Dr. Ross Henshaw in the News

Beauty queen gets her strut back

Updated: Thursday, 24 Dec 2009, 6:01 PM EST
Published : Thursday, 24 Dec 2009, 4:27 PM EST

Jocelyn Maminta

Danbury (WTNH) - A specialized knee surgery has a Connecticut beauty queen standing tall again.

Every step that Erin Olivo now takes comes with less pain. That was before she came to Danbury Hospital.

"It's painful, like you banged your knee, and it hurt to walk on it," she said.

The pain stems from a knee injury.

"Since it is still a little swollen. I can feel like its a little tough bending my muscles. They're still a little tight," she said.

Erin's knee is still a little swollen because she is recovering from a meniscus transplant.

"What the meniscus is is a little disk on the inside of our knee," explained Erin's surgeon, Dr. Ross Henshaw, Danbury Hospital.

Dr. Henshaw says Erin's knee injury caused her meniscus to wear away. To prevent arthritis from setting in at an early age, Dr. Henshaw implanted a new meniscus from a cadaver donor.

"The damage to the meniscus was actually very common in younger athletes, it's one we see often. If we get to it soon enough, we can actually repair it," he said. This type of surgery does not require the patient to take so-called rejection drugs.

"What different with most orthopedic implants is that they don't have a lot of cells in the tissue so the body does not see it as foreign and doesn't try to get rid of it," Dr. Henshaw explained.

Erin is thrilled with the results.

"I can't bend it all the way up but it's getting there slowly," she said.

Erin hopes to recover in time to compete in the next Miss Connecticut pageant.

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