New Study on Total Knee & Hip Replacement Outcomes

https://www.healio.com/rheumatology/osteoporosis-and-bone-disorders/news/online/%7B308bcacc-2ede-4284-9ee1-265df538c123%7D/physical-activity-did-not-change-6-months-after-total-hip-or-knee-arthroplasty (Physical activity did not change 6 months after total hip or knee arthroplasty)

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Physical activity did not change 6 months after total hip or knee arthroplasty


Hammet T, et al. Arthritis Care & Res. 2017;doi:10.1002/acr.23415.

September 15, 2017
There was no significant change in physical activity 6 months after total knee or hip joint replacement surgery, despite improvements in quality of life, pain and physical function, according to published results.

“Total hip and knee arthroplasty procedures are among the most common elective surgical procedures in the United States,” the researchers wrote. “By 2030, an expected 11 million Americans will have undergone total knee or hip arthroplasty.”

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The researchers conducted a systematic review of PubMed (Medline), Embase and Cinahl from inception to January 2016 for peer-reviewed cohort studies that measured pre-surgery to post-surgery physical activity (PA) using an accelerometer. Standardized mean differences (SMDs) for PA, quality of life and physical function outcomes were created using random-effects models.

Seven studies with 336 participants were included in the meta-analysis. PA did not have a significant increase at 6 months (SMD = 0.14); however, there were large improvements in physical function (SMD = 0.97), pain (SMD = -1.47) and quality of life (SMD = 1.02) for the same period.

Increase in PA at 12 months had a small to moderate significant improvement (SMD = 0.43).

“Our meta-analysis revealed that at 6-months post-surgery, participants did not show a significant increase in pre-to-post surgery PA levels,” the researchers wrote.

“Reasons for unchanged levels of PA are unknown and may be behavioral in nature as sedentary behavior is difficult to change,” the researchers concluded. “Given the consistency in effects across these studies, future studies should focus on ways to change sedentary behavior among this subgroup.” – Bruce Thiel​

 

Thanks for posting this Tom.

I have a friend in his seventies with severe knee pain, begging doctors for knee replacement surgery but they told him it's not bad enough to quality. He could barely walk one block and they were saying that was not bad enough.

So he forced himself to walk more daily, joined a gym, and he is now walking two miles daily and has a whole lot less pain. I will forward this to him.