Physiotherapy ahead of joint replacement surgery may improve outcomes

People who need joint replacement surgery could benefit from physiotherapy beforehand, suggests research published in the Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery.
US experts looked at medical data from people who had hip and knee replacement operations. They found that when people had no physiotherapy before the operation, 79.7% needed postoperative care. But if people did have physiotherapy beforehand, only 54.2% needed postoperative care.
As well as being better for patients, physiotherapy before operations reduced the overall financial burden.
“This study demonstrated an important opportunity to pre-empt postoperative outcome variances by implementing preoperative physical therapy along with management of comorbidities before and during surgery,” says Ray Wasielewski, one of the study authors.

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Image credit: P Gordon