Taylor said the results of the survey and the paper have been well-received. The paper was presented at a conference in March.
“We had great feedback from it,” Taylor said. “Ultimately, [for] the surgeons, fellow surgeons and people in the orthopedic community, it basically is almost challenging the traditional thoughts of arthroplasty.”
Sports can be something of a controversial topic among arthroplasty surgeons, Taylor said, with some disagreement about which sports are safe to return to after total joint arthroplasty.
“In today’s world with modern implants and surgical techniques, more and more surgeons are encouraging sporting activities after total joint arthroplasty because they have more confidence in the survivorship of the implants,” he said. “That was really the point of this study; to see if it was safe to do, using modern implants and modern surgical techniques, and then obviously see how patients did after surgery.”
How this applies to younger athletes — amateur or pro — is still unknown, but Taylor said it could lead to more people undergoing total joint arthroplasty in order to relieve their pain and resume competing at a high level.
Taylor noted the story of Lindsey Vonn, the Olympic champion alpine skier, who retired in 2019 but returned this past November following a partial knee replacement. In March, Vonn returned to the World Cup podium for the first time in seven years when she finished second in a super-G race.
“In patients and people with debilitating arthritis, young or old, we have a lower threshold to recommend these surgeries in today’s world because we’re more confident in their survivorship of the implants,” Taylor said. “This study kind of highlights that you can return to sporting activities safely.”
While the surgery proved beneficial to Vonn, Taylor said a total joint arthroplasty with today’s techniques likely would have been helpful to someone like Bo Jackson. A star in both professional baseball and football, Jackson dislocated his hip in an NFL playoff game in 1991. The injury required a hip replacement surgery and interrupted his baseball career while ending his football days.
“That’s where more research needs to be done,” Taylor said. “But I think in general, in the arthroplasty community, more high-impact activities like running and basketball, football, those kinds of sports I think are more discouraged versus pickleball, which is kind of considered more of a lower-impact activity.”
Pickleball is an ideal activity for those who are on the mend from total joint arthroplasty, Taylor said. He equated the replacement joints to a car engine. Engines today are lasting for more miles than they were previously, which helps improve the life of the car — or, in this case, a patient.
“I feel like anecdotally, I think people that were playing pickleball seem to me to be satisfied with their surgery and their operation and happier because I think that they’re going back to the things that they love to do,” Taylor said. “People that are playing pickleball frequently are very serious about it, and it’s a big part of their life and so I think we were pretty impressed to see how happy they were after surgery.”