How Long After Hip Replacement Can You Drive?

Can you sit in your car right after leaving the hospital?

Most people who undergo hip replacement surgery go home a few days after the operation.

Unless there are specific circumstances, it will be up to you to organize your return home.

✅ You can enter your car from the passenger side.

Make sure to move your seat back as far as possible and use one or more cushions if the seat of your car is low, to avoid excessive flexion of your hip.

❌ However, it is not advisable to drive your car yourself right after leaving the hospital.

The position is often painful, and due to the loss of strength and flexibility associated with the surgery, you may not have sufficient reflexes to drive safely.

If you are going to a rehabilitation center, it is usually the hospital or clinic that arranges transportation, which is generally done by medical transport (VSL) or ambulance.

Do you have the right to transportation voucher after hip surgery?

If your health condition requires it, the hospital or clinic can provide you with a transportation voucher so that your transport by medical transport or ambulance is covered by health insurance and supplementary insurance in order to:

• go to a rehabilitation center
• return home
• attend your physiotherapy sessions in a private practice.

However, it is quite rare to receive a transportation voucher in these last two contexts.

What does the law say about resuming driving after hip replacement surgery?

In United-States Each state has its own Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) or equivalent agency that sets the rules and regulations for driving with health issue.

However, the responsibility for assessing a person’s fitness to drive often falls on the individual driver. And not on the healthcare provider.

During the placement of the replacement, muscles and various tissues are opened. They need several weeks to heal.

You are also given powerful pain medications, in addition to anesthetics.

For all these reasons, you often have less strength, flexibility, and control in the operated leg.

Moreover, sitting in a car is often uncomfortable.

It is therefore reasonable to think that a person who has undergone hip surgery only a few days ago is probably not able to perform promptly all the maneuvers required of them while driving their car.

❌ Therefore, they are not allowed to drive during their convalescence.

When can you safely resume driving your car?

Generally, the green light to drive again after a hip replacement is given no later than at the follow-up visit with your surgeon, approximately 2 months after the operation.

Some people decide to resume driving earlier, about 2-3 weeks after the operation.

An Italian-American research team 🇮🇹🇺🇸 compiled all academic publications concerning resuming driving after total hip replacement surgery.

Here’s what they found:

MacDonald and Owen were among the first to study the effect of total hip arthroplasty on driving ability. They concluded that most patients could safely resume driving 8 weeks after the operation, but some patients required extended rehabilitation to regain their basic driving ability, which could take up to 8 months. Most studies indicate that reaction time for braking returns to preoperative levels or that patients feel confident to drive between 4 and 8 weeks after total hip replacement.

However, other studies suggest that patients may be able to drive earlier than 8 weeks. Berger et al. argued that patients could safely drive as soon as they stopped taking narcotic medications, which in their study was on average 6 days. The authors did not analyze objective data, such as braking reaction time, but rather relied on patient surveys asking when they thought they could safely resume driving.

Hernandez et al. noted that 33 of the 38 patients who underwent right total hip replacement had an average braking reaction time of 0.576 ± 0.137 seconds 2 weeks after the operation, which was significantly better than the preoperative value of 0.635 ± 0.160 seconds (p <0.029).

Jordan et al. examined the effect of left total hip arthroplasty on braking reaction time and found that patients returned to baseline levels 8 days after the operation.

MacKenzie 2018

What to take away from this?

✅ Most people who undergo hip surgery feel comfortable driving again 4 to 8 weeks after the operation.

🗓️ When attempting to quantify braking reaction time after the operation, it seems to be as good as or even better than before the operation 8 days after the operation for the left side, and 2 weeks after for the right side.