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Knee replacement activity – Lower than expected.  Many patients are quite optimistic that once they get a hip or knee replaced they will return to high levels of physical activity. Direct to consumer ads placed by knee and hip replacement manufacturers don’t help the issue, as they show people climbing mountains and generally being extremely active with their new joints. There’s been quite a bit of criticism of this advertising approach, as most patients don’t return to this level of activity.

Now comes yet another study which continues to show that knee replacement patients don’t return to amount of activity expected by the patient. The study reviewed the expectations of more than 80 knee replacement patients before their surgery and found that the average expectation of returning to high levels of physical activity never materialized after the knee replacement.

The upshot? The concept that most younger patients will return to high levels of physical activity after a knee or hip replacement isn’t supported by the medical research the same way it’s supported by the TV advertising.

Chris Centeno, MD is a specialist in regenerative medicine and the new field of Interventional Orthopedics. Centeno pioneered orthopedic stem cell procedures in 2005 and is responsible for a large amount of the published research on stem cell use for orthopedic applications. View Profile