You’ve probably heard that hip or knee replacement can get you back to doing the things you love like cycling or golfing, but did you know a replacement operation may also be able to help improve your marriage?
A recent study by Dr. Michael Tanzer, the chair of orthopaedic research at McGill University Health Center in Montreal, found that joint replacement surgery can do a marriage good. Dr. Tanzer said he was surprised by the findings of his study.
“It was obvious that [patients] have less suffering and they can be more active and they can travel more,” said Dr. Tanzer. “But that it actually improved their marital life and their relationship and their family life is not something I could have predicted beforehand.”
Replacement Surgery And Marital Success
Tanzer’s interest in looking into the connection between replacement surgery and marital success was peaked when he received a thank you note from a patient’s wife. It led him to conduct a study involving 33 couples where one partner had a knee or hip replacement within a year of the study’s development.
Tanzer presented his findings at the American Orthopaedic Surgeons’ virtual meeting this past spring. He told colleagues that in the study, patients had an average age of late 60’s with an average marriage length of 36 years, and he looked at each patient’s perspective of life before and after the operation.
85 percent of patients reported that replacement surgery improved their mobility, 73 percent said it allowed them to resume their favorite leisure and sports activities, and 70 percent said their pain levels improved. Roughly 1 in 3 said the operation improved their social and family life.
Interestingly, spouses also reported significant changes after the replacement operation. 70 percent said that one of the main advantages of the procedure was being about to carry on with social and leisure activities with their partner, and 61 percent reported that they no longer had to witness their partner suffering. More than half of spouses also said they felt a diminished caregiver burden after their spouse had a joint replaced, while more than 1 in 4 reported an improved social and family life, or an increased ability to travel.
“They can go out with friends, they can go out to dinner, they can go to the movies,” Tanzer said. “They felt it was much easier to go back to what we’d consider a normal life that we take for granted.”
The findings fall in line with previous research that suggests that on average, spouses of individuals with persistent pain have lower quality life scores and higher rates of depression. So while the physical health of one individual may be changing as a result of a knee or hip replacement, don’t discredit the positive mental and emotional health benefits the same surgery may have on a loved one.
Don’t let knee or hip pain be a physical and emotional burden on your marriage. Reclaim your independence, get back to doing the activities you love and provide your partner with a sense of relief knowing that their loved one is no longer in pain. To learn more about hip or knee replacement, reach out to Dr. Botero and his team today.
