Patients who opt for replacement hip or knee joints have a long road to recovery after the procedure. While many factors go into the decision of whether to get elective joint replacement, those who have the operation do so because they want to increase mobility and be able to do more with their lives. However, doctors recommend other types of treatments like losing weight or exercising to strengthen the muscles around the joints because the recovery process for surgical joint replacement can be intensive.
When a patient does decide to undergo a joint replacement procedure, the full process of healing the soft tissue and bone could take longer than a year. After the time, expense and recovery process, patients deserve to enjoy the benefits that they hoped for when undergoing the surgery. Unfortunately, far too often, this does not happen because patients instead find themselves coping with serious complications and with the potential need for revision surgery.
The long recovery process and the toll that a joint replacement takes on the body all make it especially tragic when hip replacements fail. While victims can recover compensation for a failed hip implant with the help of a Boston defective hip implant lawyer, nothing can ever give a victim back the time lost due to the health problems caused by defective hip joints.
Hip Implant Surgery is a Major Operation
Recently, Marketwatch took a closer look at the recovery process and the true physical and emotional cost associated with joint replacement. The director of the Connecticut Joint Replacement Institute at St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center indicated that the full recovery process, including healing of the soft tissue and bone, can take 12 or more months after the initial procedure. This is a clinical definition of recovery time, so patients could actually regain mobility before a year is up.
However, patients will need to have a period of inactivity after the operation, which can be especially frustrating to younger and more active people who had the surgery specifically because they want to maintain their active lifestyle. In 2011, for example, there were 645,000 total knee replacements and 307,000 total hip replacements in the United States. Patients aged 55 to 65 were the fastest-growing age group of patients undergoing replacement procedures, and these baby boomers are causing a rapid increase in the number of joint replacement operations. In fact, the total number of surgeries in 2011 was 30 percent higher than the number of joint replacements in 2006.
When these boomers cope with the lengthy recovery process after going through joint replacement surgery, they have the right to expect a happy ending. They should be able to be confident in the fact that their hip replacement product will last for a long time— decades even.
Unfortunately, many of these younger seniors were given metal-on-metal hip implants. Metal implants were specifically marketed towards younger crowds who wanted a more durable and longer-lasting option than the time-tested ceramic hip implants that had long been used in the joint replacement market.
The metal-on-metal hip implants are now failing at unprecedented rates within the first five years. This means that all that time spent getting better after the surgery is lost, and the patient sometimes has to go through the entire process again, usually after multiple painful and costly revision surgeries. Manufacturers need to pay for this, and defective hip implant lawyers can help.
If you are the victim of defective hip implants in Massachusetts, call Jeffrey Glassman Injury Lawyers for a free and confidential appointment — (617) 777-7777.
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