After Hip Replacement, Therapy at Home May Be Enough

Experts say that physical therapy plays a vital role in recovery after hip replacement. This new study of 77 patients found they obtained similar results no matter which therapy option they pursued after receiving their new hip.

“Our research found that the physical therapy does not necessarily need to be supervised by a physical therapist [for hip replacement patients],” said study author Dr. Matthew Austin, director of joint-replacement services at Rothman Orthopaedic Specialty Hospital in Bensalem, PA. “The expense and time required of outpatient physical therapy, both for the patient and the patient’s caretakers, may not be the most efficient use of resources.”

More than 300,000 total hip replacements are performed each year in the United States, according the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Hip replacement, or arthroplasty, is a surgical procedure in which parts of the hip joint are removed and replaced with new, artificial parts. The surgery is intended to restore function to the joint.

For their study, Austin and his colleagues randomly assigned half of the 77 hip replacement patients to two months of formal outpatient physical therapy, with two to three sessions a week. The others did only prescribed exercises on their own for two months.