3 Ways Your Medications Can Slow Recovery From Hip Replacement Surgery
If you take medications, you may experience certain side effects such as drowsiness or dizziness. You may not realize that the drugs you take to manage your chronic health conditions can affect your surgical recovery. If you are facing hip or knee replacement surgery, your prescription and over-the-counter medications may delay your healing. Here are three medications that may hinder your recovery:
Statins
If you have high cholesterol that is resistant to dietary measures, weight loss, and exercise, your doctor may have prescribed a statin medication. While effective in lowering your total cholesterol levels as well as raising your high density lipoproteins, or "good cholesterol," statin drugs can cause significant side effects that can slow your recovery from orthopaedic surgery.
After hip or knee replacement surgery, your orthopaedic surgeon will recommend that you participate in a physical therapy program to help you regain strength and range-of-motion in the affected limb. Statin drugs can cause severe muscle pain which can prevent you from effectively performing your physical therapy exercises. If you experience statin-related muscle pain, be sure to take the medication your surgeon prescribed for pain prior to going to physical therapy, as this will help minimize your discomfort so that you can work harder during your sessions.
Aspirin
Aspirin can affect your blood platelets and raise the risk for dangerous post-operative internal bleeding. After an extensive surgery such as hip replacement, prescription anticoagulants are commonly prescribed to help reduce the risk for blood clots.
If you take aspirin while taking a prescription anticoagulant, you may experience bleeding from your gastrointestinal and urinary tract, as well as bleeding from your surgical site. Do not take aspirin for pain relief after your surgery, but instead solely rely on your prescription pain relievers recommended by your physician.
Unlike aspirin, acetaminophen is safe to take after surgery, as it doesn't affect your platelets, and therefore, does not raise the risk for abnormal bleeding. Your doctor may allow you to augment your prescription pain relief regimen with acetaminophen for break-through pain.
Corticosteroids
Corticosteroids are used to help manage inflammation of the lungs and to help treat certain allergic skin reactions. These medications can significantly increase your blood sugar levels, and while this usually does not pose a problem to people with normal blood glucose levels, it can be dangerous to those with diabetes.
When blood sugar levels rise, wound healing can slow down, so if you have had surgery, your incision may be slow to close, raising the risk for infection. If you take corticosteroids, monitor your surgical site for increased bleeding, pain, swelling, redness, or drainage.
If you take any of the above medications and experience pain, bleeding, or signs of infection, call your surgeon as soon as possible. The sooner these symptoms are recognized and treated, the more likely you are to enjoy a speedy recovery.
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