Rehabilitation News

Patients who undergo elective arthroscopic hip surgery may experience a substantial increase in major clinical comorbidities up to 2 years postoperatively, according to results of a study published in British Journal of Sports Medicine.

After controlling for medical complexity, baseline function and duration of home health care episode, investigators found Medicare patients who had five or fewer home health care physical therapy visits after total knee arthroplasty had worse recovery regarding activities of daily living.

DALLAS — Patients who participated in virtual physical therapy after total knee arthroplasty had significantly lowered health care costs and similar effectiveness and safety compared with usual care, according to a poster presented at the American Association of Hip and Knee Surgeons Annual Meeting.

DALLAS — Patients who started physical therapy on the day they underwent total knee arthroplasty had no differences in hospital length of stay and patient satisfaction compared with patients who started physical therapy the morning after surgery, according to results presented at the American Association of Hip and Knee Surgeons Annual Meeting.

BARCELONA, Spain — At the EFORT Annual Congress, Victor A. van de Graaf, MD, discussed a study that compared physical therapy with arthroscopic partial meniscectomy for the treatment of degenerative knees. He said patients with nonobstructive meniscal tears may benefit from physical therapy and this may be an alternative to surgery.

Dorsal root ganglion neurostimulation therapy effectively decreased pain, increased function and created a clinically important improvement in patient impression of change among those with chronic lower extremity and back pain, according to a presenter at the Anesthesiology Annual Meeting.

LOS ANGELES — Results presented at the North American Spine Society Annual Meeting showed a small subgroup of patients with acute sciatica secondary to lumbar disc herniation may significantly benefit from chiropractic spinal manipulation therapy.

St. Luke’s University Health Network announced the launch of Comprehensive Spine, a physical-therapy-first approach program for the treatment of acute back and neck pain.

A study in The Spine Journal recently looked at spinal manipulation and mobilization to manage chronic low back pain and its findings were met with mixed reactions. Orthopedics Today invited spine specialists to discuss the study and similar issues raised in a Forbes article published about the same time.

Researchers showed interest in the assessment of physical activity through step counters as early as the 1960s, but the practice was not accepted as scientific research until the 1990s. Wearable technology has come a long way since then and so has the overall interest in using these devices as research tools. Today, however, there are lingering questions regarding which information collected from such devices is most relevant and what should be done with it.