Your Mother's Hip Surgery

If You Need a New Hip, Get Ready for Less Pain, Shorter Stays and Quicker Recovery.

- Marianne Wait

IF YOUR HIP IS KAPUT AND YOU NEED A NEW ONE, YOUR TIMING COULDN’T BE BETTER.

Just a few years ago, you’d probably spend up to a week in the hospital, then check in to an inpatient rehab center. It could take months to get off the walker and crutches. And the first few days of recovery could be downright awful.

Today many patients spend only one or two nights in the hospital – or even go home the same day. Some skip the walker entirely after they leave the hospital and toss the crutches after a week.

“Joint replacements certainly have come a long way since they were first started,” says Michael B. Cross, MD, assistant professor of orthopedic surgery at Weill Cornell Medical College and an orthopedic surgeon at Hospital for Special Surgery, both in New York City.

Close to 400,000 total hip replacements are done each year in the United States, and the numbers keep growing. “These procedures transform people’s lives,” says Joshua J. Jacobs, a past president of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons and chair of orthopedic surgery at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. “They take [people] from being in chronic pain and having functional disability – sometimes being unable to work, unable to care for their families – to, nearly overnight or at least a few days or weeks, dramatically reduced pain and restored function.”

Still, joint replacement is major surgery, and patients should be informed and have realistic expectations. For example, most doctors wouldn’t recommend it for a patient who has only moderate pain. Furthermore, some of the new innovations aren’t in use everywhere and may not be right for some patients. And some people take longer to recover.

Here’s a look at some of the advances that can make hip replacements easier and safer than before.

Better Pain Control