New Zealand Rehabilitation Association, Inc.

This systematic review is one of the latest in a number that have appeared in recent years to consider the question: does rehabilitation work? Here, the context of the question is randomised controlled trials that have investigated multidisciplinary (MDT) rehabilitation for people following hip or knee replacement surgery. For this review, MDT rehabilitation was defined as rehabilitation that includes advice from more than one health professional and that occurs soon after surgery or later on in the patients home or in an outpatient setting. This was compared ‘routinely available local services' at a lower level of involvement, minimal interventions (such as ‘information only' or ‘single session treatments') or wait list conditions. Also considered were equivalent interventions offered in different settings (e.g. inpatient vs community rehabilitation). Five trials met the inclusion criteria for this review.

The results from this systematic review came out broadly in favour of post-surgery MDT rehabilitation and in favour of community-based rehabilitation. MDT rehabilitation provided shortly after hip or knee replacement surgery was found to improve a person's ability to move. Community-based MDT rehabilitation was likewise statistically associated with patients having improved quality of life and improved abilities to do normal daily activities following hip joint replacement, but interesting no such finding was support for people following knee joint replacements.