Hip replacement surgery info

Starting to plan for my right hip surgery. Asking professionals I know to reach out to their contacts about pre/post surgery training and secondarily about surgeons/hospitals to stay away from.

Every person I have talked to raves about how great their hips feel after the surgery. I never hear anything negative ("I had the best surgeon."). I think that just about anybody doing a fair number of hip replacements a year is going to be fine.

What I am looking for the someone that uses the newer minimally invasive, 2 inch, technique (MIS). Not everyone has been trained and it may not be covered by insurance yet, all this needs to be investigated.

• Medical New Today for breaking news
• SmartBone.org
• DePuy Orthopaedics
• National Library of Medicine
• Hip Replacement Physical Therapy Tutorial
• Minimally Invasive Total Hip Replacement

Terms

• Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) with Computer-Assisted Navigation (CAN) allows the surgeon to perform the hip replacement through one or two smaller incisions.
• Total Hip Arthroplasty (THA); complete hip replacement surgery.
• Direct Anterior Approach (DAA)
• Venous Thromboembolism (VTE); potentially fatal blood clot, risk of occurrence is greater after THA.
• Short Term Recovery; patient no longer needs walking aids and can walk around the house without pain--in addition to being able to walk two blocks around the house without pain or resting. Short-term recovery also involves getting off major pain killers and having a full night's sleep without pills. (4 to 6 weeks)
• Long Term Recovery; complete healing of surgical wounds and internal soft tissues. When a patient can return to work and the activities of daily living, they are on the way to achieving the full term of recovery. Another indicator is when the patient finally feels normal again. (6 months)

Facts

• Patients who had complete hip replacement surgery, or total hip arthroplasty, had better success at preventing venous thromboembolism if they used extended duration rivaroxaban. From 9.3% down to 2% chance of death.
• Serious complications, such as joint infection, occur in less than 2% of patients. (Hanssen, A.D., et al., “Evaluation and Treatment of Infection at the Site of Total Hip or Knee Arthroplasty,” JBJS, pp. 910-922) Besides infection, possible complications include blood clots, lung congestion or pneumonia.
• Physical therapy within the first six weeks is also very important. Most of the exercises for hip replacement patients can be done at home. Patients are encouraged to see physical therapy as an integral part of their recovery and the more serious patients are about their daily exercises, the quicker they tend to return to their normal activities.
• Avoid bend the hip joint over 90 degree after surgery. How long it this going to be ill advised, what can I expect in terms of range of motion after complete recovery?
• Researchers...found that only five of the 124 cement-less metal Harris-Galante implants used to replace the bone that fits into the hip socket had failed over two decades in the patients under review...