Post hip surgery phenomenon...or is it?

Hello Doctors!

In April of this year, my almost 60yr old wife had hip replacement surgery for her right hip. She received a titanium “ball” and ceramic “socket”. The first four weeks she had a ton of restrictions (no abduction; no trailing surgical leg behind; no walking like Charlie Chaplin; etc). When the doc finally cleared her for normal PT, she constantly told her therapist that the side of her leg felt really tight (by tensor faciae latae & IT band) and seemed to be restricting her ability to perform certain exercises. The PT tried deep tissue massage and rubbed her outer thigh with some piece of metal, but nothing helped. After a few weeks, the PT told my wife to do body weight squats in and out of a chair to see how many she could get in a certain amount of time. My wife had done these initially for PT, so she was trying to break her “record”.

After maybe 15 seconds of up and down, she felt a sharp pain in her outer thigh where everything was tight. PT checked her out and she seemed fine, just really sore. PT theorized the IT band may have “popped” over the femur. My wife rested for 4 days and felt much better. Pain was markedly diminished and much of the tightness she had complained about earlier was gone. A buddy of mine who had survived a motorcycle accident last year (busted his hip…got a partial replacement)…described a similar pain and stiffness in his surgical hip shortly after being released from the hospital. Tells a story of how a wasp had landed on his thigh which made him rocket from a sitting position to a leaping one faster than ever before. Said he felt a wicked-sharp pain in his outer thigh, but after a couple days the stiffness and pain were both gone. When he told his doctor, the doc said that sometimes tissues will adhere to one another (dried blood and scar tissue) and a sudden application of force will sometimes cause separation.

My questions are…

  1. Is this really a thing?
  2. Since my wife still feels some tightness and pain in the surgical side; does there need to be another “release” to help alleviate this?
  3. How does one most successfully cause a release of tissue adherence(?)?

I suggested to my wife that she is far enough along to actually get back under the bar and run an abbreviated LP. My thoughts being that getting back into a lifting program and adding weight as tolerated might be the best thing to get her muscles back to normal. Thoughts?

Thank you in advance!!!

  1. Maybe? I don’t know, unfortunately. Post-operative adhesions do exist (particularly for intra-abdominal surgery), though I’m not sure about the specific presentation described here.
  2. Probably not any special technique other than continued progressive activity / rehab.
  3. Movement

If she’s finished up with her formal PT, I’d have her train as well.

Got her back under the bar. We’re being very conservative with the weight progression, but so far so good! Thanks for taking the time to answer my question, doc!