Hip pain, a replacement coming, or one that did not go how you hoped. One free Saturday morning in Traverse City, split so each of those three people walks out with something.
Or call (231) 944-6541 and the front desk will book you in about ninety seconds.
The morning is split so nobody sits through an hour that was not meant for them.
Why your X-ray and your pain so often disagree. What actually changes hip pain. And how to tell, honestly, when surgery really is the right call. Sometimes it is, and I will tell you that too.
In two large studies, only about one in four hips that showed arthritis on X-ray was frequently painful. Most painful hips did not show arthritis at all.
What to do with the weeks before. Why the surgery date is not the finish line. Bring whoever is driving you home from the hospital.
A review of 19 trials and 1,110 hip replacement patients found people who exercised before surgery had fewer complications and got stairs and chairs back faster.
The joint is fixed. The muscles around it are often not finished. What to do if you are months out, or a year out, and still not right.
Patients walked into surgery with hip muscles 18.6 percent weaker, and two years later the strength was still coming back.
Coming with or for someone else? Come. The spouse is usually the one who notices when something is off.
A research team pooled 19 studies covering 875 people and compared hip abductor strength before and after total hip replacement against people with no hip problem.
18.6%
Average abductor strength deficit patients walked into surgery with. Not after the operation. Before it.
That is the accumulated cost of years of walking on a joint that hurt.
Then they followed the recovery. Strength improved gradually over the next 24 months, and the authors were careful about how they put it. Deficits may improve over two years, possibly without complete recovery.
Two years. Not six weeks.
Which sets up the question the whole morning is built around. What happens if you change the number the patient walks in with?
No slideshow of surgical photography. No sales presentation at the end. You can leave at any point and nobody will chase you to the parking lot.
A study followed 167 older adults for a year after an elective hip replacement and asked a question that does not get asked often enough. How many of them fell?
42%
Sixty-seven of them fell. A hundred and forty falls between them, and ninety of those falls caused an injury.
Every one of those patients had been screened as low fall risk before surgery. These were not frail people. They were community-dwelling adults healthy enough to be scheduled for an elective operation.
That is not here to frighten anybody. It is here because balance and single-leg strength are trainable at any age in this group, and almost nobody gets sent back to work on them.
Fifteen years treating hips in northern Michigan, adjunct faculty at the Gray Institute, clinical instructor for the DPT programs at Michigan, Central Michigan, Western Michigan and Grand Valley State, and co-author of The Complete Guide to Your Hip Replacement.
Saturday, November 21 at 10:00 AM. 3899 West Front Street, Traverse City. Forty seats, and we confirm every registration by phone. The form asks which of the three sounds most like you, so the emails you get before Saturday fit.
If the form does not load, call (231) 944-6541 and the front desk will book you in about ninety seconds. We will not spam you, rent your details or sell them to anybody.