Time Taken to Resume Driving Following Hip Arthroscopy Surgery

Abstract

Background: Resuming driving is a common concern among patients undergoing hip arthroscopy. The goals of the current study were 1) to assess whether patients who have undergone right hip arthroscopy have poorer driving performance than patients with normal hips and 2) to analyse the time required to regain preoperative driving performance with respect to different types of operations.Methods: Forty-seven patients who had undergone right hip arthroscopy and who consented to our test protocol were included in this study. The patients were divided into two groups based on the type of operation that they underwent, namely, the femoroacetabular impingement surgery (FAI) group and the simple hip arthroscopy (SA) group. Using an immersive driving simulator, the patients were tested for brake reaction time (BRT), total brake time (TBT), and brake pedal depression pressure (BPD). Following the surgery, the first assessments were conducted when the patient could comfortably sit on the driving seat, and follow-up assessments were conducted for 6 consecutive weeks at weekly intervals. For the control group, 20 healthy volunteers were put through driving assessments thrice at weekly intervals. Braking parameters were compared between preoperative and postoperative measurements and between studied and controlled subjects.Results: The preoperative braking parameters of the patients who underwent arthroscopy showed no significant difference compared with normal controls (p values 0. 373, 0.763, and 0.447 for BRT, TBT, and BPD, respectively). All braking parameters returned to normal in 2 weeks in the FAI group and in 1 week in the SA group.Conclusion: Our study indicates that the driving performance of the patients undergoing right hip arthroscopy have comparable driving performance as compare to the normal hips and that the braking reaction returns to the preoperative state 1 week after SA and 2 weeks after FAI surgery.