Total knee arthroplasty patients may be able to be involved in sports, according to an interesting study presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons.

Arthroplasty or joint replacement surgery is one of the most effective clinical innovations of the last century, improving the quality of life to many people who would otherwise live with serious pain. Many of the happy patients have a single regret: unfortunately the list of activities that may increase the risk for them include some beloved sports like basketball, football, baseball, soccer, and even jogging, which the Knee Society advocates to avoid. However other experts observed even better clinical scores for the patients who took part in some of these activities compared to the control group.

They evaluated 218 persons, and this group was matched to a control group of other 317 patients having the same medical condition but following only recommended exercise guidelines.

The conclusion was that the control group encountered a 20% increasing revision rate for mechanical failure. This was quite surprising and even if the experts team hypothesized that such exercises would not increase the risk, they did not anticipate that they might improve clinical results.

Anyway they recognized that that more research is absolutely required to evaluate the long term effect. In the meantime the patients should continue to keep the traditional recommendations.

Image Credit: Foot surgery