Biloine W. Young • Thu, June 19th, 2014
Is there an optimum time—a window of opportunity—for a patient to get a hip or knee joint replaced? Data from a joint replacement monitoring program and database at UMass Medical School says “yes” and that waiting too long will reduce the benefits of surgery.
“Don’t wait until you can’t walk or take the pain any longer,” said David Ayers, M.D., the Arthur M. Pappas Chair in Orthopedics, professor of orthopedics and physical rehabilitation and director of the Musculoskeletal Center of Excellence. “That’s what we hear a lot from patients and doctors—to wait until you can’t take it anymore. But the data is telling us that for typical patients, there’s only a fixed amount of improvement you can get from surgery. So if you wait too long, you don’t get the full value.”
Ayers said that this is not about having surgery too early, either. Instead he says that doctors now have objective, data-driven tools that can help patients decide, together with their surgeons, where they are with pain and function and when to have surgery.
