| dc.description.abstract | Many people across the world suffer from joint pain with age. The degeneration of the space between bones, osteoarthritis, is an extremely common disease, known to affect around 7% of the global population. Two of the most common risk factors to the development of osteoarthritis is body weight and inactivity. These factors are usually the first target of lifestyle changes that are recommended when a patient presents to an orthopedic clinic with joint pain, specifically knee or hip. This is because the weight of the body puts pressure on the joints and leads to breakdown of the joint spaces, causing arthritis to develop and progress. Many treatment options are available for people that suffer from joint pain -- medications, injections, physical therapy, and lifestyle changes. However, the gold standard treatment option for the gradual degeneration of joint spaces is a total or partial joint replacement depending on the severity of the disease and how compromised the patient’s day to day life is at that time.
Many orthopedic surgeons prefer to exhaust more conservative treatment options prior to approving surgery, however, many patients eventually require a joint replacement due to disease relentlessness. There are two main approaches to hip replacement surgeries, anterior and posterior approach. The posterior approach has been used in practice for the longest amount of time and was the initial surgical option. However, more recently, the anterior approach has been introduced and is on the rise due to several factors that make it favorable to many providers and patients over the long-standing posterior approach. Given that many patients who eventually require joint replacement are overweight or lead a lifestyle that is very sedentary, this study will investigate whether a patient’s body mass index should influence whether the anterior approach should be used based on patient outcomes and success from the two approaches. | en_US |
