Imagine not being able to do the things you enjoy all because of a bad hip. Every move you make, you’re in pain and have a hard time just getting comfortable.
For patients who suffer from hip pain, it can be difficult to get up out of a chair or even sleep in a bed. Sanford Health offers anterior hip replacements for patients who have tried everything and still suffer from pain in their hip. Performing a total hip replacement with an anterior approach can provide a faster initial recovery for patients, allowing the surgeon to do the procedure through a smaller incision in the front of the hip.
Two months ago, Karen Jensen had difficulty getting out of a chair and relied on a cane to move around her Bismarck, North Dakota, home.
“I had a lot of difficulty walking. I had pain 24/7,” she said.
Fast forward to today and Jensen jumps right out of her chair and doesn’t even need her cane, thanks to her anterior hip replacement.
“It changed my life completely,” she said.
Knee pain prompted diagnosis
Jensen has been seeing Coridon Huez, M.D., an orthopedic surgeon at Sanford Health for several months because she was having terrible pain. But the pain wasn’t in her hip, it was in her knee.
“I had no idea that I even had any pain in my hip, it was just something I hadn’t even thought of,” she said. “I was so convinced that I had to have something else done to the knee.”
“One of the things I did in the office is I injected her hip with a corticosteroid injection,” Dr. Huez said. “This enabled me to determine that her hip was causing most of her pain, including the knee.”
So now, Jensen can get back to doing the things she enjoys, like planting flowers.
“Which always gives me a lot of pleasure to be able to put some flowers back in the yard,” she said.
And she’s making sure to take care of her new hip, just as well as she takes care of her flowers.
“I have been walking about two to three times a week. I go out and I walk for about a mile,” Jensen said. “And, of course, that was unheard of before the surgery. I just couldn’t do that.”
Dr. Huez recommended patients visit with their primary care provider if they are having pain in any of their joints. He said doing a hip replacement using the anterior approach results in less pain, less limping, a shorter hospital stay and reduced chance of hip dislocation.
Learn more
- The benefits of anterior hip replacement
- Joint replacements offer pain relief with shorter recovery
- Surgeon demystifies causes, treatments of hip and knee pain
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Posted In Health Information, Orthopedics
