A Wrexham hospice is to benefit from the recycling of old mobile phones.

Staff of the O2 mobile phone store at Eagles Meadow shopping centre are installing a bin into which customers can put old broken handsets or decide, when upgrading their phone, to donate their old one to the charity.

O2 will then recycle donated phones with all profits from reclaimed precious metals, glass or the re-sale of fully serviceable phones going to the hospice.

Manager Steven Cavanagh came up with the idea because he wanted to do something to support the hospice.

He said: “I lost my dad to cancer when I was just 15. I lived on the Wirral then and dad was actually treated at Clatterbridge before he came home where he passed away.

“What’s important is that Wrexham people and businesses support a Wrexham hospice and that what’s I’m trying to do. I know many people have really old mobile phones lying in draws and cupboards at home, phones that are basically worthless.

“I’d ask people to think about dropping off those old mobile phones with us so we can recycle them and donate the money to the hospice.”

He added: “Our customers will have a choice when they upgrade. They can donate their old phone by putting it into the recycling bin or have the refund themselves.

“But even if a phone is worthless we will still, as a business, donate a pound to Nightingale House Hospice anyway.

“Every pound raised will be a boost to the hospice’s funds. Anyone that recycles their handset in store for the hospice will be entered in to a prize draw to win a big dog teddy bear too.”

Steven moved to the Eagles Meadow O2 store as manager two months ago  having previously worked at the Cheshire Oaks Ellesmere Port outlet.

He said: “I really like it at Eagles Meadow the customers are superb and everyone is so friendly. It’s busy and we are looking forward to a particularly busy Christmas.

“It would be nice if we could donate a really good sum of money, thanks to customers recycling their old mobile phones, to Nightingale House Hospice before the New Year too.”

Margaret Hollings, Nightingale House Hospice Fundraising and Events Manager said: “We are absolutely thrilled to be the chosen charity for this campaign which is being organised by the staff at O2 in Eagles Meadow.

“Every penny really does count, so please do dig deep for those unwanted mobile phones; everybody has one hidden a draw of cupboard at home which could be recycled to raise vital sums of money.

“All you need to do is drop your old phones into the store at Eagles Meadow and all monies raised through recycling will help to fund the invaluable palliative care services at Nightingale House Hospice.”

She added: “This year it will cost £2.6m to run the hospice which equates to more than £7,000 per day. Since the hospice only receives 19 per cent from the Local Health Board, it is only enough funding to support the hospice for 69 days.

“The hospice therefore greatly relies on the generosity of the communities it serves to raise the additional funding of over £2m for the remaining 296 days of the year.  Our thanks go to Steven Cavanagh and his team at O2 Eagles Meadow for kindly choosing to support the hospices work.”

Eagles Meadow Manager Kevin Critchley said: “What an excellent idea. It’s a very neat way of supporting the much-needed services provided by Nightingale House.”

A retired marine academic is back playing the sport he loves, and has even headed off skiing, after a pioneering “made-to-measure” knee operation using 3D moulds.

Peter Grove was suffering increasing pain from a knee injury 40 years ago and been forced to give up playing most sports, including being a hockey umpire, before the operation by orthopaedics specialist Muthu Ganapathi at Wrexham’s Spire Yale Hospital.

Mr Ganapathi is leading the way with the personalised knee replacement technique, where he first carries out a virtual operation on a computer, to help create the perfect shape for the replacement, with a mould made-to-measure in Belgium.

It means the artificial knee is a custom fit, so reducing the patient’s time in the operating theatre plus the number of sterile instruments Mr Ganapathi needs to use. The technique also cuts recovery time by more than a third.

“I couldn’t believe how fast it all was, and how quick my recovery. I was up and about walking not long after the operation, and only spent three days in hospital,” said 73-year-old Mr Grove, a retired Bangor University senior lecturer in marine science from Menai Bridge.

“The problems first started when I was 19 and was running across a park in London at night, on my way to meet a girl. I tripped over a bench and damaged my left knee – it left it unstable for the rest of my life.

“My dodgy knee eventually meant I had to give up playing rugby for London Irish and playing hockey at county level, though I continued as an umpire. Finally I had to give that up as well, because of osteoarthritis. My knee was extremely painful and my wife Valerie had walk very slowly for me to keep up with her, when we took our dog out.

“So I went to see my GP and he arranged for me to see Mr Ganapathi. I had the operation at Spire Yale Hospital in Wrexham, although it was through the NHS because of the waiting lists.

“I went to Spire for an MRI scan so they could create the virtual knee, and went locally for my pre-op check-up and then follow-up appointments.

“I am now back umpiring hockey games and earlier this year went skiing in the Pyrenees, on a blue run – though I took precautions about not falling over.

“I thought the metal in my knees might cause problems at airports, with the scanners but they are getting used to such operations now, and I just have to warn them the scanners will go off!”

Mr Ganapathi has now done more than 200 of these procedures and has one of the largest personal series of these procedures in the UK. He now hosts visiting surgeons from other hospitals across Britain who come to see this procedure being done with this new technique.

He said: “Like many features of an individual person, each person’s knees are to some extent different. Studies have shown that good alignment of a knee replacement is important for optimal outcome. In addition, the component sizing and optimal positioning are also important.

“During conventional knee replacements, manual guides are used and a certain amount of ‘eye balling’ is involved – this can result in a proportion of ‘outliers’ who can have less than optimal function.

“With a custom fit knee, an MRI scan of the person’s hip, knee and ankle is done few weeks before the operation. Computer software creates the 3D model of the patient’s knee and allows the surgeon to plan the bone cuts and component placement.

“The model also allows the best sizing option and shape. These images are then used to create precise 3D plastic moulds which, when placed on that particular patient’s knee during surgery, allows customised bone preparation as planned previously in the computer.

“Essentially the surgeon does a virtual knee replacement in the computer and then executes this plan during the actual surgery.

“While the actual surgery will still be the same as a conventional knee replacement, I felt that there may be significant advantages by adopting this new technique. In fact my own data has shown that already there has been significant benefits including much shorter operative time, patient’s seem to be recovering faster with shorter length of stay and almost nil blood transfusion requirement.

“More importantly, I am also finding that the average one year patient reported functional outcome scores with this technique are much better than what has been published  as national standards in the national joint registry data on knee replacements using conventional techniques despite having similar preoperative scores. I think this is a significant benefit for the patients and may be related to the careful planning done during the virtual knee replacement,” added Mr Ganapathi.

The specialist hip and knee surgeon trained in Cardiff and Canada and visited specialist centres in US before starting as a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at Bangor. He now works for the NHS at Ysbyty Gwynedd, and privately at Spire Yale Hospital in Wrexham and Abergele.

You can find further details of this new technique at www.ganapathihipkneesurgeon.com