As people live longer and play harder, their hips bear an increasingly heavier load. Dr. Joel Wells , a comprehensive hip surgeon, and Dr. Megan Sorich , leader of UT Southwestern’s Geriatric Fractures program, discuss advances in hip preservation and replacement as well as strategies to safeguard long-term hip health.
we put a lot of pressure on them when we're standing walking or playing sports. So it's not surprising that over time our hips hurt here to discuss why we have hip pain and how to relieve it, Our orthopedic surgeons dr Megan storage and dr Joel wells, welcome dr storch. I'll begin with you tell us what hip pain is and what did that causes for hip pain. Hip pain can be a combination of hip pain and also back pain. Hip pain can be located in the front of the hip, the side of the hip or even the back side of the hip. Dr Wells occasionally when we think of hip pain, we think of older adults, but hip pain is common in young adults as well. What are the causes of hip pain and young people? Hip pain is actually extremely common in the young adult population even before the onset of arthritis. It's usually the sports that pushed the end range of motion of the hip and what I mean by that, I mean stretching or significant range of motion in the hip, such as yoga, hockey, hockey, and also soccer. Um these sports are often problematic to the hip just because of that. Doctor shortages, you're a specialist in geriatric hip health and hip injuries. What are some common causes of hip injury in the elderly? Some of the more common causes of hip injury and the elderly are falls and falls can be prevented, making sure that you don't have throw rugs that are slippery, making sure that you're able to see another cause of injury in our older adults tends to be muscle muscle imbalances. So as we get a little bit older our posture tends to change and that makes our hips flex a little bit more when we walk. We don't use our core muscles quite as much and our big strong hip muscles become a little bit weaker and we can get hip pain as a result of that. Are the swords. How do you know when hip pain is severe enough to see a doctor? Hip pain is severe enough to see a doctor when it's bothering you with the activities you enjoy activities every day, even when you're sleeping at night when I sleep disturbance is really affecting your life because of hip pain. We want to see you for further evaluation dr wells, what are three things you can do to improve your hip health number one keep your weight down, you put about 3 to 5 times your body weight on your hips to stay active but also cross train. And so certain activities can actually be harmful to the hip and such as um such as certain stretches. If you have some type of deformities. And then three take your calcium, vitamin D. Dr swords. What is the role of calcium and vitamin D. And improving hip health, calcium and vitamin D. Is pivotal for bone health. The way the easiest way to understand the relationship of calcium and vitamin D. Is you can think of calcium as driving the car, it loads up vitamin D. And it drives it to the bone. So you really need both calcium and vitamin D. To optimize your bone health. I recommend calcium and vitamin D. For all patients regardless of their age, vitamin D. Should be at least 2000 international units daily and calcium should be 1200 mg for just about everyone. Are you seeing an increase in hip pain or hip injury as a result of changes in behavior during the pandemic? As more people are working from home and living a more sedentary lifestyle. I have seen an increase of complaints of hip pain and back pain. So I encourage people the more that you can walk, especially now that the weather is getting warmer. Take advantage of walking outside walking is a great exercise to really strengthen those leg muscles and continue your hip health. So at its core, what is the main reason the hip needs to be replaced? There's always a mechanical reason why hips wear out. You know, hips don't just wear out from wear and tear. Usually there is something inherent to the hip. And so hip preservation is the concept that hips have a mechanical disadvantage and they wear out. Therefore if you can actually change the mechanics of the hip, you may be able to preserve them or prevent a replacement dr storage hip replacement is a term that a lot of people use. But tell us exactly what hip replacement surgery is, what's being replaced for hip replacement surgery. We actually get rid of the arthritis by replacing the ball as well as the socket. And we use metal. We use plastic and also ceramic types of materials to literally get rid of the arthritis and replace your hip joint. Dr Wells. We've talked on this program about minimally invasive surgery for many different problems. Tell us what minimally invasive hip surgery is, minimally invasive. Surgery is not just the size of the incision, but also how you handle soft tissues and and how you're able to not cut muscles within surgery and repair things afterwards. Dr Wells, you're a hip specialist. Tell us why you chose that part of orthopedics. And what's so satisfying about that for your own career. I love the anatomy of the hip. The the hip is the foundation of how we stand, how we walk and why we can do what we do not to mention when the, when the hip degrades the patient's function declines very, very quickly. They can go from being active to a cane to a walker to a wheelchair, sometimes within months and so you can restore a patient's quality of life. But ultimately, the, the hip anatomy is fascinating to me what we're learning about the hip and preservation and other areas and avenues of the hip is, is up and coming. And it's uh it's it's just exciting. That's just sort you've launched a program at UT Southwestern called restore. Tell us about the program and what it's about. The restore program is returning seniors to orthopedic excellence. So this is tailoring all of our older adult patients with any orthopedic injury. We're really focusing on the trauma or the fractures, but it's open to anybody who is an older adult with orthopedic injuries. Our goal is to get them to surgery if they have a fracture as soon as medically able to try to decrease pain medicine in their post operative course and really improve patient outcomes. We launched the program in february. It's unique because there's not a lot of places. Actually no one in north texas has a program focusing on our orthopedic elderly population. So it's really exciting that we have it the opportunity here at UT Southwestern. Thank you both for being here and for the great advice on hip health as we consider better ways to promote our own health and stay active throughout our entire lives. Thank you dr Warner. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining us until next episode. Stay safe and stay healthy.
