IADMS Miami 2000   [back to the Category]

Activity Level of Dancers after Total Hip Replacement (THR) Surgery   [read the french version]

Author :   Judith B. Alter, Ed.D.

Author: Judith B. Alter, Ed.D., Department of World Arts and Cultures, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA

THR surgery is one of the most commonly performed orthopedic procedures in the Western world; many dancers have undergone this surgery. Serious hip injury might be understood as one of the professional hazards of being a dancer. Dancers identify with their profession and have great difficulty letting go of their physical involvement with dance; hence a study about their ability to resume physical activity is especially important.

My descriptive qualitative study specifically centers on the resumption of previous activity of 20 to 30 dancers who have undergone THR surgery. The interviews will include dancers’ experience before, during, and after their THR procedure. The following are the questions I will ask:
What were the symptoms that preceded and precipitated your THR?
What limitation(s) did you encounter in your dancing, teaching, and other parts of your life?
When did you have your THR? Please describe your recovery and rehabilitation regimen: crutches, cane, walking, sleeping, physical therapy, your own exercises.
Describe if, when, and how you returned to dance and other physical activities.
Has your hip(s) dislocated? When? How? Please describe your rehabilitation regimen afterward, if any.
If you have had a revision of your surgery describe your rehabilitation and activity resumption.
What recommendations do you have for other dancers (active people) following THR

A review of the medical and physical therapy literature reveals that little systematic research has been done on the resumption of previous activity levels of people under the age of sixty who have total hip replacement (THR) surgery. Studies only focus on the type of exercise, low or high impact, in relation to the need to revise the original surgery. As the generation of joggers and physical-fitness conscious people ages, the need to understand how to facilitate safe activity will increase. The results of this study will, therefore, have ramifications beyond the dance community. I am in the early stages of contacting dancers now and I expect to have the study complete by October for presentation at the IADMS Conference.

I will ask dancers I know who have had THR surgery to participate in the study and also ask them if they know others who might participate. I will invite these others to contact my graduate assistant who is conducting and transcribing the interviews. All subjects will remain anonymous and any identifying detail will be removed. Subjects will also see and approve transcripts of their interviews. I am following the standard protocol approved by the UCLA Committee on Human Subjects Research.

My personal experience and professional background make this study a logical one for me to undertake. At the age of 59, after dancing for over 50 years, in August, 1997 I had THR surgery on my right hip. It dislocated twice in the first nine months. I had minimal physical therapy follow-up for either the surgery or the dislocations, partly, I think, because the doctor thought that, as a dancer, I could rehabilitate myself and partly because of the limitations of the health-care system. Although I have expertise in injury prevention I have had no previous experience with activity after THR surgery. Any theoretical conclusions will be inductively derived after I have collected and analyzed the data.

This is the abstract of a paper presented at the Tenth Annual Meeting of the International Association for Dance Medicine and Science, held 27-29 October 2000 in Miami, Florida, USA. All rights are reserved by the individual author(s).