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Hip Replacement Alternatives

What are the best hip replacement alternatives? The answer to that will depend on your individual circumstances particularly on:-

  • your diagnosis
  • how far advanced your condition is
  • how much it is affecting you. (How much it is limiting your mobility or causing you pain)
  • your age
  • other relevant medical conditions e.g. osteoporosis
In some cases, like mine, your condition will be too far advanced for other options to be feasible and a hip replacement will be your best choice

There are two types of alternatives can be split into two types. First, conservative management, is aimed at delaying the need for surgery and, in a few cases may be so effective that you might chose to forgo the operation altogether. The second offers alternative surgical techniques.

Conservative Management can be divided into
  • hip pain relief - I strongly recommend using a pain diary to help monitor symptoms.
  • disease modifying medication
  • hip exercise
  • weight loss - losing weight can relieve the pressure from your damaged joint.

Alternative surgical techniques include



Following the links above should provide you with sufficient information to hold an informed discussion with your consultant. It is only through such discussion that you can feel confident that you are making the best decision for yourself.

Please note I haven't added any information about arthrodesis or nutrition.

Arthrodesis (joint fusion) used to be offered to hip patients to relieve intractable pain. With the amazing progress that has been made in hip replacement and hip resurfacing it is now only used as a treatment of last resort when a hip replacement has failed

Nutrition - there are any amounts of claims that this or that diet or this or that supplement help relieve either osteoarthritis or rheumatoid arthritis - most of them have little or no evidence to support the claims. This does not mean they don't work - just that they haven't been demonstrated to do so. I will write more on nutrition later.

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