PAO recovery: week 10

what's typical at week 10

weeks 8–16

Weeks 8-16 · weight comes back

Somewhere in the 8-12 week window — x-ray permitting — you transition to weight-bearing as tolerated, then wean from two crutches to one to none. The physio consensus deliberately refuses to give a calendar date for the last crutch: the criterion is a symmetric gait without a Trendelenburg lean, whenever that arrives. For most people that's somewhere between weeks 8 and 16.

Two practical milestones cluster here. Driving: the only brake-reaction-time study in PAO patients (small, n=26) found most people were not safe at six weeks but had normalized by twelve. And work: in a 242-patient cohort the median return was sixteen weeks, with a quarter back by twelve — desk jobs at the early end, anything physical much later.

Pain in this window is the least-documented of the whole recovery: no study publishes three-month pain scores, so the 2-3/10 you'd expect here is interpolated between the week-six diary data and the six-month cohorts. If your reality is meaningfully above that band — especially groin pain that spikes with each step — flag it rather than assuming it's normal.

documented at this week

milestones around now

• wk 10 ·Full weight-bearing established (8-12 weeks, gated by x-ray consolidation; protocol-dependent)
• wk 11 ·Off crutches / normalized gait (Criterion-based during weeks 6-12 (symmetric gait, no Trendelenburg), not a fixed week)
• wk 12 ·Return to driving (brake reaction time normalized) (Most not yet safe at 6 weeks; normalized by 12 weeks (single n=26 study))
• wk 16 ·Return to work (Median 16 weeks, IQR 12-22 (n=242); 38.6% back by 12 wk, 85.7% by 24 wk (occupation split not reported))