In this video, just a few short words about stairs. If you are having, or have had a total hip or knee replacement and you are considering whether stairs are going to be an issue then this page should hopefully help to answer this question. Whilst stairs are often thought of as something that is very difficult, in actual fact, with the right technique, you should definitely be able to achieve stairs after your surgery. Most of the time we will trial you on a few stairs before your discharge, and if you have many stairs at home, we will prioritise this to ensure that you can achieve what you need to before you go home.
Physiotherapists will often say: Good leg to heaven, bad leg to hell, as a way to remember which one to put down first. This means – when you are going up stairs, put your non painful leg up, and when coming down stairs, put your sore leg down first. This can be somewhat of a slightly different proposition if you have had bilateral surgery – however you will always feel that one of your legs will be recovering faster than the other with bilateral surgeries.
Thankyou for tuning in. Questions from our patients and answer are below.
Should I move to the ground floor of my house after surgery?
As above, stairs are able to be achieved. It does help if your stair case has a handrail or similar, which will give you the added support. You would normally go up one stair at a time, and down 1 stair at a time. If you can achieve this, then you do not need to stay downstairs whilst you recover.Just take your time and you will find that you can recover reasonably well, despite having stairs to negotiate. If you have to go up and down a lot of stairs to do more urgent things like going to the bathroom, then it might be best to limit the stairs in this instance.
What shoes should I wear in recovery?
There is actually no real guidance on this, except wear shoes you are familiar with, and that are stable, and have good grip. Things like thongs, slippers with low grip, and wooly socks with low grip are not preferred. If you can wear well support shoes that you have worn many times before then this will make things familiar, safe and stable.
With our hip replacement, remember that there are no issues with bending over to put on shoes normally as we do not restrict flexion.