Episode 1767 - Rethinking post-operative guidelines

Dr. Christina Prevett // #GeriOnICE // www.ptonice.com

In today's episode of the PT on ICE Daily Show, join Modern Management of the Older Adult division leader Christina Prevett discusses reframing the conversation around post-operative guidelines for physical therapy treatment.

Take a listen to learn how to better serve this population of patients & athletes, or check out the full show notes on our blog at www.ptonice.com/blog.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

INTRODUCTIONHello everyone and welcome to the PT on Ice daily show. My name is Christina Prevett. I am one of our lead faculty in our geriatric division. I'm coming to you from the University of Ottawa, so if there's a little bit of background noise, that is exactly why. But today, what I wanted to talk to you about, and the reason why I'm on here a little bit early is because I feel like this is gonna take me a little bit of time to get through, is to start reconceptualizing our post-operative guidelines when we're thinking about not just musculoskeletal injury, but many of our post-operative protocols when we're thinking about early healing and early recovery. in the post-operative window. And so I just posted a reel on our ICE Instagram account that's talking about hip precautions and how we have research going back from as like synthesis of research systematic reviews of research going back as far as 2015 to show that these precautions that were intended to reduce risk of early hip dislocation actually don't do that and what they actually do is they exacerbate post-operative deconditioning and they increase fear of movement. And we see this all the time in clinical practice, right? Individuals go for surgery. They're given these restrictions. These restrictions are not evidence informed. They're never discharged. And what it does is it causes people to disengage with activities of daily living, with sports, with activities that they enjoy. They become more sedentary. And then downstream, we see that the amount of postoperative deconditioning is greater and their capacity to engage back into the things that they enjoy before surgery is less. You know, I've had clients that have said to me, I'm so much worse. Like, my pain is better, but I feel worse than when I went in for surgery. Like, why did I even get this done if I could have dealt with this surgery? And so over the last couple of months, I have really been thinking and noodling on this. I did a podcast on the pelvic section on our Mondays around how our pelvic restrictive guidelines around lifting are not evidence informed at all either. And that when we remove those guidelines, and we have now multiple RCTs that have said, you know, other than don't have penetrative intercourse for six weeks, when we say here are your buoys, and here's how you can progress based on how you feel. not only do you not see an increased risk of postoperative complications in those individuals with liberal restrictions, but they actually have a reduced pelvic floor burden in that postoperative window. And so that early recovery is actually enhanced. And so we have to kind of understand where some of these guidelines come from and how are we as a profession in allied health going to start pushing the narrative and where is our role in that because I think we have a really massive role. So the first thing that needs to be acknowledged that is really front of center when it comes to post-operative guidelines is that when we do research and we take surgeons and we have done cross-sectional surveys, not we other researchers, and asked, you know, where did these lifting restrictions come from? Like, where is your evidence? Or do you believe that your restrictions are evidence-informed? In our pelvic literature, we saw that 75% of urogyne surgeons recognized that the reason for their restrictions is because this is what they have always done. And only 23% of the surgeons surveyed believed that the restrictions that they were giving were evidence-informed. Now that is a massive problem, right? We so often in medicine come through the lens of let's avoid bad outcomes that we don't acknowledge that the lack of doing something by restricting a person's movement can actually lead to adverse outcomes down the road, right? Because yes, they're not saying we did X activity and caused X outcome, but the removal of activity, now what we know in all of our accumulated literature on the effect of deconditioning on trajectory of aging, clinical geriatric syndromes, and post-operative deconditioning that can lead to changes in independence, that deconditioning also needs to be acknowledged in our algorithm of what we are thinking when it comes to our post-operative guidelines. And so what we are acknowledging first is that one, we have evidence that does not support restrictive guidelines in many different examples, right, our arthritis literature, not sitting in bed post cardiac surgery, our lifting restrictions post pelvic surgery, we now have a variety of different areas across different organ systems, musculoskeletal surgery, cardiovascular surgery, urogyne surgeries where we are acknowledging that our restrictions are overly restrictive and that that restriction does not create better outcomes. The step forward that I want to make is that not only are they not leading to better outcomes, but that subsequent deconditioning by overly restricting a person is an adverse outcome in itself in the opposite direction. And what this is highlighting is that we have a big knowledge translation gap problem. We acknowledge in many areas of medicine that this exists, but this is front of center for our allied health clinicians around what we are allowing in our practice or what we are acknowledging in our practice. And so you're gonna say Christina, okay, where are these restrictions coming from and why as a clinician am I hesitant to push back on these guidelines despite the fact that I know that these are not evidence-informed, right? So because there's a hesitancy on the side of the clinician and We want to acknowledge those. Those are the elephants in the room, right? So the first thing is around the fear of an adverse outcome, right? When we don't do anything, we don't have that same feeling of responsibility if something was to go wrong, right? Because I didn't push them. So it wasn't me that caused that adverse outcome, right? And we can't always avoid adverse outcomes, but what we do a lot at MMOA is we try and flip the script of, you know, we think about the harm of loading people, but what's the harm if we don't load them? And that's a slower churn, a slower burn, but it's important to acknowledge that that's relevant too, right? So that fear. But the fear also comes from going against the surgeon and liability and referrals. And so I want to acknowledge that piece and I want to acknowledge it on a couple of different stances. Number one is that our messaging is never to, you know, speak negatively to the surgeon and speak about the person. We speak about the concept. And so the way that if I'm trying to remove restrictions that have been placed on somebody or deviate from a protocol, which I tend to do a lot, when the surgeon has outlined this, I will say where your surgeon was looking at was this is their scope. They're looking for lumps, bumps, infection, early complications. Where my lens is here. based on their assessment of you two weeks ago, they may have felt X from where I am assessing you today. Here's where I think our steps are going forward. So it is not bashing the surgeon. It is not going against the surgeon. It is using my scope as a doctorate level clinician to be able to make further recommendations going forward. And as a newbie clinician, the thought of going against the protocol set out by the surgeon used to terrify me, right? I'm a rule follower and our medical system has placed medicine at the top, which, you know, they have the brunt of the liability. I understand where that is coming from. But as I get into my research degree or when I get into my research career and I acknowledge the level of the evidence when I see the outcomes that are so much better when I ditch these protocols and load people more aggressively earlier and I recognize that a surgeon has never never actually rehabbed a person after their surgeries, it changes my mind, right? I would never go up to the surgeon and say, you know, you are going to go with that anterolateral approach for that hip replacement. I really think you should take a posterior approach. It would be better. Because that's not my scope of practice, right? That's not what I do. That is not where my skill set is. So why are we so shackled by a surgeon telling us what our job is, who has never, never rehabbed a person after their surgery, has not actually seen them for more than 15 minutes in an appointment after their surgery. And so I I would never take continuing education from a PT who