The annual meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons was held from March 12 to 16 in Las Vegas and attracted approximately 30,000 participants from around the world. The conference highlighted recent advances in the diagnosis and management of musculoskeletal conditions, with presentations focusing on joint fractures, osteoarthritis, other musculoskeletal injuries, and factors impacting the outcomes of joint replacement procedures.

In one study, Mary I. O'Connor, M.D., of the Yale School of Medicine and Yale New Haven Hospital in Connecticut, and colleagues found that a telerehabilitation program for patients undergoing hip and knee replacement surgery is effective and delivers high levels of patient satisfaction, comparable clinical outcomes, and lower costs.

"As we recognize the challenges within health care, we need to relentlessly focus on lowering costs while maintaining or preferably improving quality and the patient experience. This is essential as we must always keep the patient at the center of all we do," O'Connor said. "Therefore, we need modalities that engage patients. We had very high levels of patient satisfaction with our telerehabilitation program."

The program discharged patients to their home with a telerehabilitation protocol, which still included some traditional face-to-face physical therapy sessions. This protocol intended to extend physical therapy in the home effectively without a physical therapist personally being with the patient for every single therapy session.

"One of the really valuable aspects of this technology is the data. You actually know if your patient is doing their exercises at home or not. For example, if a patient fails to log into the program for two days in a row, the team can reach out to the patient to make sure everything is OK. We also can assess if the patient is progressing with their exercise program because we can see the data," O'Connor explained. "There are varying degrees of compliance with a home exercise program. We understand that patients often simply do not do their exercises at home as they are supposed to. With this technology, the interactive nature of the program and tracking of progress promotes compliance and actually makes it more fun for the patients."

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