Patient Videos

Patients recover extremely quickly using minimally invasive surgical techniques. Although discharge of patients the day of surgery has been most advertised by surgeons utilizing a 2-incision technique, there is no data to show that either a single incision or 2-incision total hip replacement technique is superior to the other. Additionally, the single incision technique has been shown to be safe in multiple studies, whereas the 2-incision technique has been shown to have a high complication rate even among the developers of the technique (click here to learn more about the differences between single incision and 2-incision surgeries).

In the fall of 2003, to determine whether single-incision patients could successfully be discharged the day of surgery, I pre-selected 15 patients to undergo a single-incision total hip replacement with an accelerated rehabilitation program in order to discharge them the day of surgery. Utilizing a protocol similar to that used by advocates of the 2-incision technique, all 15 were up and walking comfortably the day of surgery.

Although this study proves that it is possible to discharge pre-selected patients the day of surgery, many surgeons, including myself, have serious concerns about the safety of discharging total hip replacement patients too early. Therefore, I do not routinely discharge patients the same day.

See videos of single-incision patients walking the day of surgery