When you find out that your elderly loved one is in need of a hip replacement surgery, you may find that you do not know what you can do to provide them with the help and support that they need. However, there are many steps that you can take to ensure that your elderly loved one makes it through their hip replacement surgery as successfully and easily as possible. Get to know more about what you can do for your elderly loved one who is getting their hip replaced so that you can be sure that you are doing everything in your power to help them through their surgery and their recovery.

Encourage Them To Do Physical Therapy Exercises Leading Up To Surgery

Because a person needing hip replacement surgery is often in a fair amount of pain, they may not want to get up and move around or exercise as they should. While this may prevent some of the pain they experience in the short-term leading up to their surgery, it can cause recovery difficulties down the line.

Your elderly loved one is at a physical disadvantage going into surgery as compared to most people who are younger than they are. Their bones may be less dense and their muscle strength may be lower than their younger counterparts simply due to the aging process. If you add inactivity to that, then the muscles surrounding the hip joint and in the leg will have a hard time bouncing back and supporting the hip joint during recovery.

Try to get your elderly loved one into a pre-surgery physical therapy program before their hip replacement surgery. This will help them to remain active and to really focus on keeping their leg, pelvic, and abdominal muscles strong and flexible going into surgery and recovery. The better shape they get those supportive muscles into going into surgery, the quicker and easier the recovery process will be.

Help Get Their Home Ready

When your loved one comes home from their surgery, they will require the use of a walker and/or a cane for quite a while to help stabilize themselves as they move around their home. This means they will need wider walkways than they normally would to navigate through the home. They also may shuffle more than lift their feet early on after surgery because of pain and/or joint stiffness.

To accommodate these new mobility needs, you can help them rearrange their house so they can get to and from bed, the living room, and the bathroom more easily. You may need to rearrange furniture or set up a makeshift bedroom for them on the main level of the house (if their bedroom is upstairs, they will not be able to access it for several weeks after surgery).

It is also important to remove any tripping hazards like throw rugs, small tables, or any walkway obstructions they could catch their walker, cane, or even their toes on. This will all make moving around their house easier and safer after surgery and can prevent injuries due to falls.

Now that you know a few of the ways that you can help your elderly loved one through hip replacement surgery, you can get started as soon as possible and make sure you are doing everything you can to make the process easier for your loved one.

For hip replacement, contact a company such as Orthopaedic Associates of Muskegon.