Hip Joint Surgery

Hip Joint Surgery is a last ditch option to fix a hip problem that nothing else can fix or even touch.

Depending on the hip joint problem, there is some debate over whether surgery is the 'only' way to address the problem.  But that's up to you, and you and your doctors.

Depending on the problem, you're looking at a little surgery, or a big surgery.  In all cases, though, surgery causes injury to the body and that's gong to require recovery time and rehab exercises.

Below are the different kinds of hip surgery.

Two Categories Of
Hip Joint Surgery

For our purposes, there are only two kinds of hip joint surgery:

• Arthroscopy
• Hip replacement 

Arthroscopy is small incisions to get into the joint to clean it up/remove loose pieces, etc.  

Hip replacement surgery is partial or complete replacement of the hip joint.

Arthroscopic Hip Surgery

Arthroscopy is a minimally invasive procedure, consisting of 2 to 3 small incisions.

Through the small incisions (approximate diameter of a straw) a camera and a 'shaver' (and other tools) are inserted.

The camera, the 'arthroscope' can be inserted into the joint to take a look around.  

The other tools can:

• shave off tissue
• snip off tissue
• grab and remove tissue

Arthroscopy is the surgery of choice for 'small' surgeries focused on:

• 'smooth' rough joint lining caused by hip osteoarthritis
• remove loose cartilage chunks
• grind off bone spurs
• synovectomy (remove inflammed synovial tissue)
• hip impingement (femoroacetabular impingement)
• hip bursitis
• hip osteoarthritis

Arthroscopic surgery is the common method used to deal with various injury and sports injury.

Patients of any age with the right kind of injury are candidates for arthroscopic hip surgery, but 'best' candidates are active people 40 and under.

Hip Replacement Surgery is 'big' surgery

• partial replacement of hip joint
• total replacement of hip joint

We're talking partial and total replacement of the hip joint.  Meaning, removing the bones and tissue that makes up the joint, and replacing it with metal.

This involves removal of the femur, and potentially the femur and part of the pelvic bone, and replacing with metal parts (which requires hammering metal down into bone).

Surprisingly, this has pretty good outcomes.

Hip replacement (partial and complete) candidates are usually 'elderly' with significant degenerative hip disease, osteoarthritis, and unfortunately, osteoporosis.

See:  Hip Replacement Surgery

Hip Joint Surgery And Tendonitis

What does tendonitis have to do with hip joint surgery?

Ultimately, in the vast majority of cases, the tendonitis dynamic is the underlying cause of the eventual rip/tear injury and/or hip joint degeneration.

How's that work?

It works very predictably.  That's just how the body works.

You think that sports injury happens by accident for no reason?

You think that grandma got old and her hip went bad for no reason?

Think again.   The tendonitis dynamic is involved in each and every.

** For the record, by 'sports injury' I mean from rip/tear injuries from walking/running/swimming/riding/jumping etc.  I don't mean getting blindsided by a 300 pound lineman or having some soccer player slide into you and take your legs out.

Hip Injury From Sports

Hip injury from sports that involves a rip/tear is generally the result of muscles failing to do their job.  Muscles don't absorb enough force, that force has to go somewhere it's not supposed to, and a rip or tear results.

This progressive dysfunction usually builds up over time, unknown to the person, until SURPRISE!

We think that injury occurs out of the blue, for no reason, and it is blamed on bad luck and 'weakness'.

But in reality, the tendonitis dynamic is to blame.

Tendonitis can show up most anywhere, and the Pain Causing Dynamic explains the slow buildup of dysfunction that ends in hip injury that an arthroscopic surgeon can come in and 'fix'.

See:  What Is Tendonitis?

Hip Injury From 'Age'...

Doctors tend to blame any 'degenerative' scenario of hip pain on 'age', 'getting old', and natural and unavoidable causes.

While it's true we all get older, that's all garbage and a travesty of 'science based medicine'.

Degenerative hip disease is the negatives of hip osteoarthritis and Osteoporosis.

Osteoarthritis is inflammation and damage to the interior of the joint which eventually degrades cartilage and leaves 'bone on bone'.

Osteoporosis is the degradation of the density and structural integrity of bone due to (primarily) malnutrition.

See:  Article On Osteoporosis

'Aging' doesn't cause degenerative hip joint disease.  Lack of nutrition does.   Long term muscle tightness and dysfunction does.

And the tendonitis is again to blame for that long term and progressive muscle tightness and dysfunction.

Hip joint surgery is great at repairing tears, removing loose tissue blocking joint articulation, and replacing worn out hip joints.

But the tendonitis dynamic is still there, and usually worse, after surgery.  You might not feel tendon pain, but the muscle and connective tissue tightness, inflammation, and lack of nutrition are present and active.

Tendonitis Before Hip Joint Surgery, Tendonitis After

As described above, you had the tendonitis dynamic before hip joint surgery.  And you'll still have it afterwards.

Surgery causes injury.  Injury causes:

• increase in inflammation
• increase in 'muscle guarding' (chronic tightness)
• tight muscles compress the joint

But after surgery people do get better, and on with their lives.  

But, we think instinctively that we get better back to square one.

Unfortunatey, we don't.   We're better for some period of time (even decades) but that tightness and inflammation and nutritional lack are always working in there.

So while we may be pain free or close to it, you'll notice people move less, be less active, have less energy, etc.

Some of that is 'aging'.  But a lot of the 'common' effects of aging are caused by ever increasing tightness, inflammation, and nutritional lack.

The better we can reverse those mechanisms the happier and healthier we are.

So we'd best recover from hip surgery as best we can, yes?

Hip Joint Surgery Recovery

We have hip pain.  We have hip surgery.

Usually the doctor doesn't give us much in the way of post-surgery recovery aside from prescriptions from:

• Rest
• Anti-inflammatory drugs like Ibuprofen
• Physical Therapy

Rest Post-Surgery

I don't usually recommend rest, but it is good and necessary post-surgery.  You just got hacked into.  You need to rest to heal and recover.

Or at least, you have to not move much so you don't injure your surgery injuries.

A little tiny bit of movement is good though.  Movement is life.  So a tiny bit of movement, just to keep the nervous system firing.

Rotate the leg back and forth, even a quarter of an inch.  Often and regularly throughout the day.

Your first instinct is to hold as still as possible (because it hurts to move).  And, push past that and keep tiny bits of movement happening.

You will heal stronger and faster.

Reduce Inflammation

The Process of Inflammation causes swelling and releases chemical which enhances your sensitivity to pain (which causes muscle tightness and more inflammation).

Surgery causes injury, which causes more inflammation on top of what was already there.

Inflammation is good in the short term. But in the long term, its problematic.

But it's good to reduce inflammation to keep pain levels down. That's good for MANY mechanisms happening post-surgery.

If you can get one of those ice chest/ice water pumps to keep the hip cold, that's a sure way to keep pain down and to increase recovery times.

You want CIRCULATION, so go warm/cold/warm/cold/warm/cold.

Body temp is fine to warm things back up.

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