Short postoperative stay after hip arthroplasty can be achieved without intensive patient preparation or post-discharge care and without compromising short-term patient outcome or increasing health care costs. Longer term follow-up is needed.

Despite extensive information about long‐term recovery from major joint arthroplasty, little attention has been given to the measurement of functional recovery in the immediate postoperative period. Therefore assumptions about the importance of physical therapy during this period remain untested. We devised a way of recording functional recovery before discharge, based primarily on the achievement of objective milestones. This was incorporated into routine physiotherapy practice and applied to sequential patients undergoing elective hip (n = 163) or knee (n = 66) replacement. Six months later, we followed up 160 patients, of whom 145 completed questionnaires to assess subjective physical and emotional state and functional recovery. The method was sensitive to known influences on pace of recovery, including type of arthroplasty (hip vs knee) and surgeons’ differing requirements for mobilization. In addition, we were able to confirm and quantify sources of variation in functional recovery which previously were suspected but unconfirmed: in particular, the timing of early mobilization. Outcome at 6 months was unrelated to objective functional recovery in hospital, although fatigue and wellbeing at this time were predicted by physiotherapists’ subjective assessment of patients’ motivation before discharge. The findings can be used to inform patients and as a source of comparison data for the assessment of functional recovery in other centres. More importantly, the procedure reported may be applied to quantify functional recovery in routine practice and thereby expose variability in recovery to scientific scrutiny.

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