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By Serena McNiff<\/b>
HealthDay Reporter<\/i><\/p>\n
THURSDAY, July 9, 2020 (HealthDay News)<\/p>\n
If you have a bad hip and lower back pain<\/a>, a new study suggests that hip replacement<\/a> surgery may solve both issues at once.<\/p>\n Researchers at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City focused on 500 patients who underwent hip replacement<\/a> surgery and followed up with them one year after the operation.<\/p>\n Over 40% reported pain<\/a> in their lower back prior to hip surgery. Of that group, 82% saw their back pain<\/a> vanish after surgery.<\/p>\n It was “completely gone,” said study author Dr. Jonathan Vigdorchik, a hip and knee surgeon at the hospital.<\/p>\n He said that experts in his field have studied the connection between the hip and back for years.<\/p>\n A hip replacement is a surgical procedure to replace a worn-out or damaged hip joint with an artificial one. On average, it is a highly successful operation, with 95% of patients experiencing pain<\/a> relief, according to the Hospital for Special Surgery.<\/p>\n “It’s an outstanding procedure,” said Dr. Craig Della Valle, a professor of orthopedic surgery at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. “There are very few things in medicine that are close to hip replacement in terms of how good of a medical procedure it is.” He wasn’t part of the study.<\/p>\n But Vigdorchik added that patients who have undergone some types of spinal surgery before a hip replacement face five times the rate of complications compared to the general population — for which the complication rate is less than 1%.<\/p>\n This knowledge prompted him to dive deeper into the hip-back interplay.<\/p>\n “We noticed that there are certain conditions where a hip condition can actually put undue stress<\/a> on the back,” Vigdorchik explained.<\/p>\n He and his fellow researchers wanted to find out how effective a hip replacement can be in eliminating low back pain<\/a>, and determine which patients are more likely to benefit.<\/p>\n The patients whose low back pain<\/a> resolved after the surgery were those with “flexible spines,” according to Vigdorchik. When a person’s spine is flexible, a stiff or poorly functioning hip can drive the spine to move more than usual, causing pain<\/a>.<\/p>\n Those with normal flexibility in their spine were also highly likely to have their pain<\/a> resolved.<\/p>\n “Those are the patients whose back pain<\/a> went away completely after their hip replacement, because their back pain<\/a> was probably caused by their hip not functioning properly to begin with,” said Vigdorchik.<\/p>\n But the back pain<\/a> in patients with stiff spines did not go away. Patients with stiff spines already have serious arthritis<\/a> of the spine, and replacing the hip is unlikely to relieve their pain.<\/p>\n But how can you know if your back pain<\/a> could be resolved with a hip replacement?<\/p>\n It’s not easy to figure that out on your own, according to Vigdorchik. “It really relies on a good physical exam, and then good X-rays<\/a>,” he said.<\/p>\n Before a patient undergoes a hip replacement, surgeons will typically take an X-ray of the patient lying down.<\/p>\n In this study, researchers took X-rays<\/a> of their patients standing up and sitting down, both before and after the surgery.<\/p>\n These X-rays allowed them to see how the hip and spine moved in relation to each other, and assessed the flexibility of their spine, as the patient switched from a standing position to a seated position.<\/p>\n Vigdorchik encouraged other surgeons to utilize these X-rays to identify patients whose ailing backs may be relieved by a hip replacement.<\/p>\n He also advised surgeons in the field to “look beyond just the hip.”<\/p>\n “Anytime they’re looking at the hip, they should also look at the back, and anytime they’re looking at the knee, they should also look at the hip,” Vigdorchik said.<\/p>\n The existence of an interplay between the hip and back is well known to experts, but Della Valle said that this study showed how consistent it is.<\/p>\n He said the study gives surgeons in the field “some tools to try to predict which patients you can tell, ‘Yeah, your back pain<\/a> will get better,’ and others, well, maybe it won’t.”<\/p>\n The study was published online recently during a virtual meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons.<\/p>\n![\"MedicalNews\"](\"https:\/\/images.medicinenet.com\/images\/HealthDay\/healthday.png\")
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