Hip replacement surgery can now be ambulatory!

Recovery from a hip intervention could exceed a week of hospitalization with severe pain, which during the first months prevented patients from developing their lives normally.  Now, the Hospital Clínic of Barcelona has managed, for the first time in Spain, to perform a hip replacement operation without the need for admission.

Dr. Jenaro Ángel Fernández, from the Orthopedic Surgery and Traumatology Service operated on the 42-year-old patient who had a hip prosthesis implanted and was able to leave the center the same day on his own foot. How did they do it? optimizing the entire medical and surgical process, since the use of blood transfusions was reduced, no muscles or tendons were cut, and no drains or tubes were placed. It is also vital to involve the patient to optimize the result. Before the operation, you already know the hospital environment, the admission process, the surgery, how the recovery will be, and you also learn how you can contribute to improving the results. In recent years, the Barcelona center had already managed to halve, on average, the hospitalization of patients who undergo hip replacement (total hip arthroplasty) from seven days in 2013 to only 3.5 in 2019. Now, it has already been made ambulatory.