Pain management and accelerated rehabilitation for total hip and total knee arthroplasty

Abstract

Improved pain management techniques and accelerated rehabilitation programs are revolutionizing our patients' postoperative experience after total hip and knee arthroplasty. The process involves regional anesthesia with multimodal pain control using local periarticular injections in combination with enhanced patient education and accelerated rehabilitation provided by a dedicated team of surgeons, physicians, anesthesiologists, physician assistants, physical therapists, and social workers. With this system, it is now possible to achieve a painless recovery after total hip arthroplasty and total knee arthroplasty. Although this is not always the case, it was unheard of in prior years. It is our hope that future research into this area will make painful, difficult recoveries after total hip arthroplasty and total knee arthroplasty a distant memory.