Hip replacement

[StevieG]

So a sometime eurolurker lured into posting. While I'm due a new ACL and putting off the dreaded day for another season (I can sort of manage without so far) I'm looking here for some good news stories on skiing after a hip replacement on behalf of my late 60s mother. She's a blue cruiser type but my folks get in 2 weeks a year still preferring places like Breck, Heavenly, Lake Louise these days. She also does a lot of hiking but is really starting to hurt on a daily basis and will have a total replacement sometime before Xmas.

So anyone got any good news stories about people they know getting back to skiing and hking post hip replacement? Or downsides?

Sorry, no sister so no nekkid pics.

[noname]

Stevie

You can certainly ski after a hip replacement. I had a ceramic on ceramic hip replacement 4 years ago and I've skied on it a lot. I'm 43 , skiing since 12.

My hip is weaker and more painful than most ( due to the nature of my initial injury) but I find it easier to ski than jog( can't jog more than 50 yards).

Advisability of skiing after a hip replacement would be debated, I would guess 18 out of 20 orthopods would advise against it. From the time I injured my leg all I was worried about was not being able to ski. As I said to many people, " I don't care if I can't walk properly, so long as I can ski"

Essentially the risks of skiing with a hip replacement are

a. Dislocation ( if you fall)
b. Fracture ( if you fall)
c. Decreased lifespan of the new joint.

Skiing groomers doesn't load the hip as much as jogging and is probably pretty safe. Steeps load the hip more than groomers but still not as much as running.

I find groomers easy, powder easy, smooth steeps easy. I avoid bumps now and try not to ski semi-cutup, half frozen crud.

I spend most of my time in "slackcountry" or backcountry type snow.

This link shows some video of me skiing on my hip replacement - I'm the first and last skier on the vid. http://youtube.com/watch?v=n32yNSc4CBQ

There's also a Swiss study that compared skiers after hip replacement, with non-skiers after hip replacement and found that the skiers did better.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/en...ubmed_RVDocSum

Good luck with it

[StevieG]

Thanks for that. Since I first posted she has been in to see her surgeon who, as a skier himself, basically said "As a surgeon I wouldn't advise you to ski again, as a skier I wouldn't advise you not to.. if there's any problem we can always address that if it happens".

Good to see your's worked so well.