Movement is Medicine: Recovery After a Total Joint Replacement
Every year, more than a million Americans undergo surgery for a total or partial joint replacement. If you are considering joint replacement surgery, there are steps that you need to take right now to ensure that you will achieve the best possible outcome.
Educating yourself about the procedure, optimizing your diet, and staying active are all important steps. The MOST important step, however, is to initiate and participate in what is commonly called Pre-Rehabilitation or “Pre-Hab.” These are Physical Therapy programs specifically designed to be participated in before going under the knife. They include specific educational and treatment components that can maximize the benefit of your surgery. They ensure that throughout your surgical experience and recovery, you will have less pain, recover faster and recover more fully.
The general condition of a joint before it is to be replaced is, by nature, becoming progressively more dysfunctional. The joint often gets more and more stiff, weak and painful. Unfortunately, the stiffer and weaker a joint is before the surgery, the longer and more difficult the recovery is after the surgery.
This circumstance is what has motivated us at Alliance Health, and others across the country, to develop Pre-Hab programs which are very successful at minimizing symptoms prior to surgery, so that afterward, you are ensured a speedy recovery. In other words, if you can make even small improvements to strength and range of motion before the surgery, and at the same time become better informed about what to expect through your surgery and recovery, you can rest easy that you are doing everything you can to ensure the best possible outcome.
As with all of our treatment programs and philosophies, we developed our Pre-Hab program based on some of the best and most current research. Two studies, in particular, have validated the concept with extensive investigation and observation of patients undergoing joint replacements here in the United States.
The American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation recently published a study that followed a group of patients undergoing Total Knee Arthroplasty and found a significant improvement in the outcomes from the group that participated in a Physical Therapy program before surgery that included both treatment and educational components. An even more recent study was only just published in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery which also demonstrated not only significantly improved outcomes after undergoing a well designed Pre-Hab program, but substantial cost savings as well.
Anytime we decide to have surgery, we want the best for ourselves, but can often feel like it is out of our control. Perhaps the most important thing to take away from this research is that you do in fact have control. By finding and participating in a Pre-Hab program, you can contribute to ensuring the most successful surgical outcome.
