Joint Replacement Doesn’t Have To End Your Pickleball Hobby
A recent study found that players were typically able to return to the court six months after hip or knee replacement surgery.
By Steve Drumwright - Red Line Editorial
Patient after patient would come into the clinic with the same question for Dr. Adam Taylor and his orthopedic surgery colleagues: “When can I play pickleball again?”
It’s a fitting question considering these folks had just undergone a joint arthroplasty — a knee or hip replacement. And as it turns out, pickleball has become quite popular among the generation that’s most frequently undergoing the procedure.
“There was a ton of overlap between the popularity of pickleball and total joint arthroplasty,” Taylor said. “So, it inspired us to look into it a little further.”
Taylor is an assistant professor of clinical orthopedic surgery at the University of California, Davis, near Sacramento. When he and his peers noticed the influx of queries from patients regarding pickleball, they decided to write a paper, “Can I Pickle Doc? Return to Pickleball and Other Racket Sports After Total Joint Arthroplasty.”
They sent out surveys to 7,200 patients asking about their current and prior involvement in racket sports, including pickleball, and the skill level they were at prior to and following the procedure. There were 1,284 responses from people ranging in age from 51 to 83 with an average age of 67.
Of the respondents, 61.7 percent had never played a racket sport before, while 13 percent had played in the two years before surgery. The remaining 25.3 percent had last played more than two years before the procedure.
Of the recent players, 71.9 percent resumed their pickleball careers, while 30.2 percent of the more remote players did. Many who did not continue with the sport cited a lack of interest, including 35 percent who responded with a “meh.”
The researchers noticed a relatively quick return for those sticking it out, with a majority getting back onto a pickleball court within six months and maintaining their pre-surgery skill level. Those who had played in the two years before surgery also reported a higher physical function upon their return. Importantly, Taylor and his colleagues found that the rate of re-operation between pickleballers and non-pickleballers was similar, so the activity essentially had no noteworthy impact on the new joint’s function.
“I think the biggest takeaway was that there was no difference in re-operation rates,” Taylor said. “I think it appeared to be safe. The majority of recent racket sports players were able to return to play at the same skill level by about six months postoperatively, with higher physical function scores.”
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.”
Steve Drumwright is a journalist based in Murrieta, California. He is a freelance contributor to USA Pickleball on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.
