Out of state

Anterior hip replacement and Hip Resurfacing make it easier to travel to New York to have your surgery and return safely home within often less than a week after surgery.

Are you a candidate to come to New York for surgery?

It is important that you are perfectly healthy if you like to leave New York after your discharge from the Hospital. If you had major heart disease, have had a blood clot or pulmonary emboli, are no longer mobile we strongly recommend to stay in New York for a longer period. However, younger an more active patients usually have no problems to fly or travel home after their surgery. Please ask your primary care doctor if you have any medical condition that could pose a problem for your travel.

How can we make sure you need hip surgery?

The simple thing is to schedule an appointment and come to New York to discuss the indication for surgery and discuss possible non-operative treatment options. This also gives you the opportunity to get to know Dr. Boettner and his team and make sure you are comfortable coming to us for your surgery.

If you would like to come to us directly to have your surgery please be aware of the following: Dr. Boettner will only consider hip replacement surgery if you have considered alternative non-operative treatments and if those treatments have failed. These include treatments like: intraarticular injections, NSIADs, activity modification, physical therapy etc. If you have never had any treatments we will usually not consider moving forward with surgery. In addition you will need to send us an x-ray so we can make sure surgery is really indicated.

Can I come to New York the day before surgery?

If you are healthy and are a candidate for surgery there should be no problem for you to travel to New York a day or two before the surgery to do you medical clearance and discuss the surgery and its risk with Dr. Boettner. We do recommend that you have a medical check up at home to minimize the chance that the surgery needs to be cancelled or postponed because of a medical problem. You will also need to stop any blood thinner before surgery. Please discuss this with your primary care doctor but some blood thinner (Coumadin, Pradaxa, Plavix, etc.) need to be stopped at least 6 days in advance of the surgery. In general if you are on any of these blood thinners you probably have a medical condition that does not make you a candidate for return home within days after surgery.

After the surgery you will stay in the hospital for 2-3 days. Patients from out of state we sometimes keep 4 days to make sure they can fly home directly after the discharge. However, you might decide to stay in New York a few more days especially if you need to fly or travel more than 2-3 hours. Our office can assist you with finding a hotel in the area.

Do I need to come back for follow up?

After surgery we usually like to see you once at 4-8 weeks after surgery. Sometimes we are able to do this via skype to limit further travel. However a personal evaluation can be very beneficial to discuss any questions and make sure you have achieved the result we want you to.