Fast-track Rehabilitation After Total Knee or Hip Arthroplasty: an Observational Prospective Case-control Study

In the last years, a lot of surgical fast track programs (SFTP) have been created and developed. This is due to the steady growing number of interventions on knee and hip; after the surgical treatment, a period of physical rehabilitation (PR) is established to be useful and effective, it usually takes 2-3 weeks. The recovery of strength, range of motion (ROM), independence, the reduction of pain and disability are the aims of PR. With the SFTP and a specific rehabilitation program named fast track rehabilitation (FTR) these times can be reduced. First of all because the length of stay (LOS) it's also caused by organizational problems of the hospitals, not only for the factors related to the patient. It's already been demonstrated that an early mobilization decreases the risk of thromboembolic complications and of pain, furthermore an early rehabilitation increase the patient autonomy and reduces the lost of residual abilities. Moreover a PR program studied for fast track patient will reduce minimum by a 50% the LOS in hospital, decreasing so the sanitary efforts that are always a problem for all the countries. The aim of this study is therefore to propose a fast track rehabilitation program based on an 8 days program for hip and knee arthroplasty being operated with an SFTP.