Wooden to Have Operation on Hip

John Wooden, whose degenerative right hip makes it difficult for him to walk without a cane, is scheduled to have the joint in the hip surgically replaced next month.

“It’s just gotten increasingly worse,” the former UCLA basketball coach said. “I can get along without the cane, but every now and then I’ll get (into a situation) where, if I didn’t have the cane, I might fall.

“In the house, I’ve always got a wall nearby, or a chair, so I don’t use it around the house. But if I go outside--even to go out and get the mail or something--I need the cane.”

Wooden said the operation will be performed July 31 by Desmond Dall, program director of orthopedic surgery at Hospital of the Good Samaritan and a professor of clinical orthopedics at USC.

Dall said that hip joints are usually replaced because of a mechanical-type of arthritis known as osteoarthritis, which he described as “quite common” in men who have been active in sport.

Wooden, 80, was an All-American basketball player at Purdue.

“The patient with hip osteoarthritis experiences pain with walking . . . has a limp, gets stiffness in the joint, becomes less mobile,” Dall said. “The question is, really how disabled is disabled? One does not do this operation for a mild ache or pain.”

Said Dall of the procedure: “I wouldn’t call it a simple surgery. It is major surgery and . . . has to be done with precision. There is a lot of technology that goes into it.”