For Clinicians

This blog is dedicated to improving patient care by disseminating the most recent research breakthroughs to clinicians who care for patients with joint pain or patients who underwent joint arthroplasty. Experts in the field will routinely update this blog to keep you informed. If you have ideas for blog topics or would like to learn about evidence-based practice for your discipline, feel free to email our staff. We will primarily focus on rehabilitation science, but the information in this blog will be of interest to nurses, physicians, surgeons, occupational therapists and all other health care workers.

Biomechanics in your Clinic

I am lucky to be able to spend my time evaluating movement patterns in our Motion Analysis Laboratory. We can get detailed joint angles and forces that are accurate down to the millimeter, degree and Newton. While this is great for research, our assessments do…

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Using the Wii Balance Board to Measure Asymmetry

The quick version: We recently completed a study evaluating the use of the Wii Balance Board to measure how asymmetrical people move before and after total joint replacement. The purpose of the study was to examine the reliability and the validity of this low-cost device…

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Sports after total joint replacement. What are the risks? (Part 2 of 2)

Are there risks associated with returning to sports after total joint replacement? The short answer: Yes. Are these risks any different than people playing sports who don’t have any joint problems? The short answer: Maybe, but we don’t really know. Why don’t we have a…

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Return to sports after total joint replacement. Why this is the next hot topic. (Part 1 of 2)

While we often hear about return to sport programs and criteria for patients with ACL injury, patellofemoral pain, and shoulder injuries, we don’t often hear much about returning to sports after total joint replacement. That is going to change very soon. Patients are getting younger, implants…

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Be Careful What You Read

There is a rigor to scientific work. For intervention studies,  these research guidelines have primarily been derived from the pharmacological literature. Subject blinding, randomization, careful description of the intervention and protocol should allow future researchers to repeat the experiments and allow clinicians to incorporate the…

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ACL Reconstruction – Risks, Rehabilitation and Return to Play

ACL reconstruction is one of the most common sports-related orthopaedic surgeries in the U.S. and is regularly advised for individuals who aim to return to unrestricted sports activity. Many of these athletes expect they will return to sports, without limitations, by the following competitive season….

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Non-Operative Management for Patients after ACL rupture

In the United States, the typical patient who ruptures his or her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) undergoes surgical reconstruction within a few weeks. However, there is more than a decade of data to suggest that this is not always the optimal or necessary course of…

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The Physical Therapy Brand

This weekend after attending the Combined Sections Meeting of the American Physical Therapy Association, I had the opportunity to extend my western vacation and travel to Orange County, CA to visit my friend and his family. His father had recently seen his rheumatologist because he…

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