Dr. Joshua John-Ram Schacter warns that high-impact activities like running and weighted hiking accelerate wear on joint implants, making revision surgery more likely. Revisions have worse outcomes than primary replacements, and timing multiple surgeries across a lifetime carries greater health costs.
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And if you're having the first major surgery later in life, you're much healthier than if you're stacking surgery on surgery on surgery.
You can't run on a joint replacement. You probably shouldn't do weighted hiking on a joint replacement. And we're telling more and more patients, oh, it's okay for you to be active, but the result of that is your joint replacement wears out earlier. You need a revision. And revision joint replacements are never as good as the original one. Not only that, but then you're having a major surgery later in life. And if you're having the first major surgery later in life, you're much healthier than if you're stacking surgery on surgery on surgery. And if we have our revision surgery when we're 75 instead of our primary joint replacement when we're 75, then that is going to be a major, major metabolic impact.