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Signs You Need a Hip Replacement

Signs You Need a Hip Replacement

What are the common signs you might need hip replacement and who needs a hip replacement operation?  Dr Dan Albright, an orthopedic surgeon in Raleigh NC, explains when a patient may want to consider hip replacement surgery.

Summary of video:

So who needs a hip replacement surgery? Typically it's someone middle-aged or older. It could happen as young as 40 years old, but more commonly it is a patient sixty to seventy years old who's losing cartilage in the hip. What are the symptoms? A person starts limping. Then pain develops in the groin area.  The hip is actually located in the groin and that pain can shoot or radiate to the buttocks, outer part of your pelvis or down the thigh to the knee.

Many people have knee pain when they actually have hip arthritis. IT is common that a worn out hip gives knee pain.

Who needs a hip replacement?  It is someone who has tried conservative non-surgical measures. Taking ibuprofen, aspirin, naproxen, and anti-inflammatories can help reduce the swelling and pain.  Keeping your weight down reduces the stress on the hip and knee. It's been proven that less weight is less hip pain.

Running and jogging should be reduced. The hip is wearing out so try swimming, biking, and toning the muscles but not jumping, pounding or running.

Injections can help.  Hip joint injections with steroids or cortisone steroids can help. Occasionally a gel shot which is called visco supplementation.

Those are the basics. Physical therapy is recommended sometimes just to tone up muscles and then when these measures do not help and if an x-ray shows loss of cartilage and bone on bone arthritis it's time to think about a hip replacement. A total hip replacement which is a proven operation. 

Millions of people have hip replacements. The science is there. The research is there.

If you're interested in talking more about hip replacements, particularly the anterior approach to the hip, contact Dr. Dan Albright at 919-863-6808.

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