While the actual operation gets much of the focus, the success of your knee or hip replacement surgery depends largely on your rehabilitation efforts after the procedure. Because of this, medical researchers have been looking into ways to help keep a person’s rehab on track and prevent setbacks after a joint replacement procedure. According to new research, a “hovering” program may be able to do just that.
Keeping Patients On Track After Hip Or Knee Surgery
Few people like it when someone else is hovering over their shoulder and watching their every move, but knowing you’re being watched isn’t all that bad. Not only can monitoring help keep you on task and make you more productive, but it can also help you follow through on previous commitments. So for knee or hip replacement patients, having someone hovering over them could be exactly what they need to get the most out of the rehab.
Now, we’re not saying that you should have someone watching your every move for the next 8-12 weeks, but recent research has shown that electronic hovering could prove beneficial for patients who have undergone a joint replacement operation.
For their study, researchers split joint replacement patients into one of two groups. The first group received the standard hospital care plan and physical therapy routine, while the other enrolled in a hovering program. The hovering program began before surgery and lasted for 45 days after the operation. The hovering program consisted of a number of factors that were designed to help keep a person’s rehabilitation on track. Some of those factors included:
- Monitoring a patient’s recovery and movement through wearable activity trackers
- Sending text messages about postoperative goals and milestones
- Pain score tracking
- Making it easier to connect with their physician throughout their recovery
After comparing the two groups, researchers found one key difference. Patients in the standard care group were four times more likely to need to return to the hospital after surgery (12%) compared to those who used the hovering program (3%).
Researchers said that this type of automated hovering program can help patients and clinicians respond to issues that come up during their recovery before a larger problem develops. Without such access, by the time a potential hazard is identified, the only way to successfully treat it may be through readmission to a care center. And not only is readmission for another treatment a pain, it can also be costly. These hovering programs also have the potential to greatly reduce patient costs by avoiding care center readmission.
So while a hovering program isn’t something we offer at the time being, there are lessons we can glean from the research that will allow us to better serve our patients. Improved communication throughout the recovery process is key to preventing post-op problems, so know that you’ll be hearing from us regularly as you progress through your rehab.
To learn more or to talk to a specialist about your knee or hip pain, reach out to Dr. Botero’s office today.
