Focus on Treating Hip Pathology Tony Rocklin DPT is known as “the hip guy” in Portland and around the Pacific Northwest. He’s been a physical therapist for 18 years, and for the last ten years has focused on treating hip pathology. Tony went in that direction when he started noticing that there was a big void in how the hip joint was being treated. This was particularly true when compared to the much more advanced research being done on shoulders and knees. He was shocked to find that the general standard of care for hip pathology was painkillers, a cane, and waiting for it to get bad enough for surgery. That led Tony to independent research, reviewing and improving older...
Physical therapy to treat symptoms In this excerpt from his workshop at OPTA 2016, Dr. Tony Rocklin reviews therapeutic exercises for hip osteoarthritis that patients can perform at home to improve their mobility. Tony is a leading advocate for conservative treatment for patients with hip osteoarthritis that isn’t “drug-centric”. While the disease is degenerative and can’t be cured, the symptoms associated with it can be treated. These exercises are an important component of best practices for the conservative treatment of hip osteoarthritis. Those best practices minimize the use of medications and opioids and focus on physical therapy and therapeutic exercise to relieve the pain and improve mobility for patients. Unlike the use of drugs, which focus just on relieving pain, physical...
Self-management when surgery isn’t an option In the second part of this podcast, Tony Rocklin DPT discusses self-management of chronic hip pain with moderator Benoy Mathew. The discussion begins around the case of a 46-year-old male with chronic hip pain. His MRI scan showed cam impingement with labral tears. His surgeon told him he’s too young for a hip replacement and too old for an arthroscopy. That’s particularly true since there’s now evidence that the arthroscopy could make things worse, and force him into a hip replacement within 2 or 3 years. The result for the patient is that he needs to manage his symptoms for the next ten or fifteen years – preferably without giving up the activities he enjoys. Tony...
Home Long Axis Traction Options In this excerpt from his workshop at the OPTA Conference in 2016, Dr. Tony Rocklin, a leading advocate for the expanded use of physical therapy in pre-surgical management of hip osteoarthritis, discusses a couple of the different ways patients can use traction at home to decrease pain and improve mobility. One of the key considerations in determining which method chosen is the amount of traction force supplied by each method and the amount of force needed to achieve the goal. Studies show that the force needed to distract the conscious human hip is 400 N (Newtons) +/- 50. Superbands and inversion tables can provide light traction, but not sufficient to create deformation to the joint...
