Arthroplasty: Surgery Expectations

Transcript

The most important thing for patients to be able to do prior to their surgery is to know what to expect from their surgery. Many patients come to me from other surgeons with an expectation that they will be able to play golf in just two weeks following their hip replacement surgery or ride a bike or go mountain climbing. If you have the wrong expectations following the surgery, you’re bound to not be happy with your result. Joint replacement is one of the most successful surgeries in orthopedics, but it takes time to recover from your joint replacement. In hip replacement surgery, we require that the femoral acetabular components grow into the bone over time. This requires at least three months for this to happen. During this time, we want patients to abstain from very high risk activities such as high impact jumping, climbing. Those types of activities could potentially dislodge the prosthesis and ultimately decrease the chance for true bonding of the implant to the patient’s native bone.