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Facing Surgery?
By Andrew Burke, MSPT
Deciding to commit to a surgery to correct an orthopedic problem is usually not easy. It can be a decision process that takes weeks, months or even years. Fears about postsurgical pain and the post rehabilitative process are factors that can slow down your decision to have something like a total hip or knee replacement. Those fears are still present once you decide to go through with the operation. Preoperative physical therapy can help to assuage those fears and has been shown to speed up the rehabilitation following surgery.
People are often sent to our clinic by their doctors to improve preoperative strength and range of motion. Improving your baseline strength and flexibility prior to surgery will help to combat the muscle atrophy and tightening that happens postoperatively. Also, meeting your therapist, asking questions and getting familiar with your outpatient physical therapy setting will help to make the post rehabilitative process less mysterious.
A study in the October 2006 issue of Arthritis Care & Research compared 108 patients going in for total hip or knee replacement. Fifty-four of the patients had a preoperative strengthening and flexibility program for the 6 weeks prior to surgery and the other fifty-four patients received just educational material. The results showed that patients who exercised reduced their odds of discharge to an inpatient rehabilitation facility by 73 percent. This means those patients were able to go directly home after surgery because they displayed less functional limitations than the group that did not exercise before surgery.
Surgery can be a scary thing but exercise and information beforehand can make the process easier.
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